A Mandate from Heaven -- Book Two: Ha

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SEVEN
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	The seven of us were packed like sardines into the back of a truck. The driver didn't say a word to us. We were treated like a deadly virus. Of course the driver and the soldiers in the truck 'escorting' us had no idea what we had discovered.  I suspect that they were told that if they discussed it they would be tried for treason and espionage. The hours we spent in the back of the truck were spent in complete silence.

	But the silence was deafening. The otherwise boring drone of the diesel motor became deafening when it was the only thing to listen to. Eventually it subsided to the other noises that were creeping in. As we drove through the streets of Capital City, we could hear the chanting of protesters.

"Two! Four! Six! Eight! We want to desegregate!"

"What do we want?

"the vote!"

"When do we want it?

"Now!"

“This is not about justice -- this is about dignity!”

	Those were the natives in the streets. Not those from the Water Tribe voting class. I don’t think all of them were being coerced by The Party of the Earth Kingdom. Right or wrong, there really was genuine passion. None of them knew what was about to be unleashed upon their country.

By contrast, all of us in this little sardine can looked exhausted and world weary. None more so than Koko. I’d seen eyes like hers before only once, in another airbender I had once called brother...

There were two instances in my career that awarded me Silver Star. The first was my first real deployment, and the second was awarded for my last. The first one I've already started. Maybe I should finish?

"Anti-personnel, tracer, silicate core," Xian Li whispered Korah

"Do you have eyes on target?" Korah asked.

"Five degrees to your left," Xian Li answered

"Negative. "

"look for tree-cancer"

	Tree cancer was a reference to a mistake common among inexperienced snipers. They would try to hide behind trees, with their heads and rifle popping up over the roots of the tree. While their bodies remained hidden, their heads would appear to be a knotted, bulbous, cancerous growth on the tree's trunk. Tree cancer.

"Got him… "

"range: eight hundred meters, elevation: seven degrees. Crosswind: four knots. Hold the air."

"holding"

	Korah's air bending didn't just make him an excellent parachutist. It also made him an excellent sniper. He could read the air-currents and put a bullet on coin from five hundred meters away in a typhoon. But sometimes an air bending sniper liked to practice more direct techniques. His bending allowed him to not only hold back the wind but create a vacuum between him and his target along the flight path of the bullet. I didn't notice how loud the breeze was until he had stopped it. Suddenly the whole jungle seemed to go quiet

"Take the shot."

"Sir, I think he can see me, he's looking right at me"

"Take the sh—"

BANG!

	It was a million-in-one hit. Korah received the White Death's bullet the exact moment he squeezed the trigger. The round that hit him passed straight through his scope, knocking his barrel of target. I watched the tracer arch its way across the sky, off target by about twenty degrees. Xian Li didn't flinch, he kept staring down his binoculars. He raised his wrist.

	Most bullets are made of lead with a copper jacket and go far too fast to be seen. This one had a tracer, a little tiny flare that glowed bright allowing it to clearly seen by anyone behind it or to the side of it. It also had a chip of silicate in the tip instead of just lead – silicate being the compound that makes up the majority of a rock's composition, of course. With a flick of his fingers he used his earth bending to curve the bullet back on path into the White Death's head. Pop! No time to confirm the kill, this was good enough for our intents and purposes. We'd need to get out of here in a hurry. In a bout ten minutes, we would be—

Korrah!

"I-I'm OK," he said. "I'm alright."

	I looked at him, and then his gun. The scope had been completely destroyed. The White Death's bullet had pierced cleanly through all of its optics.  The deformed tip of the bullet protruded from the end of it, millimeters from Korah's eye. He was lucky his eye wasn’t filled with shards of glass.

"R-really, I'm OK."

	We packed up and raced down the hill to the road. Jet made sure to plant several mines and booby traps for anybody passing through the area. Korah had since slung his rifle over his back and switched to a knife and handgun. He was sweating a lot, even for the heat.

"Are you OK, Korah?"

"I'm fine," he said to me. "Really, I am."

	We knew for a fact that a manhunt was being organized and they would catch us if we didn't keep moving. We through the jungle as fast as we could, but Korah kept falling out, kept having to sprint to catch back up to our position. On our through the jungle we came upon a clearing, in the center was a village full of locals. We'd all seen it before. The kind of thing they don't show in the press. Children running around naked because they couldn't afford clothing. Their ribs showing and bellies distended because foreign aid had been stolen by the local warlords. Flies covered them. They did have cattle to tend to, but they were too valuable to kill for food. Rumor has it that when things go really bad they would go so far as to lick up their livestock's menstruation. Such things are unthinkable until you have seen it with your own eyes.

"This is awful," said korah. "This is absolutely awful. This is disgusting." His hands were shaking.

Xian Li grabbed Korah by his collar and pulled him close, "You better harden up right now, Korah! You think this sucks? This is why we're here. Now get motivated, get tactical, and fall in line, or so help I am leaving you here! Do you understand?"

"yessir"

	This is what happens to us when our defenses and coping mechanisms fail us. Somewhere on the inside we were still as human as anyone else, but were tasked to do inhuman things. What else, when confronted with the reality of the world we were living in, could we do but break down into a useless crying heap like Korah? That night, Korah saw the world as it really was, not some television show that was seen through his scope. He was no longer removed; he had become part of the world in which he lived. That's why we all had our different ways of dealing with things. That's why I vowed to never let what I see or did get to me. To keep it contained and bottled away, at least until the mission and the fighting was over.

But Korah no longer had his condom.He was no longer an outside observer. He was part of this world now. And it dirtied him. Not all fun and games and grabass now is it, Korah?

The bullet whizzed passed our heads with a *kapwing!*

"In the tree line! In the tree line!"

"Fall back!"

"Make for the Jungle!"

We all ran for the tree line on the opposite end of the village as our pursuers, bullets licking at our heels. We about-faced and made prone to return the fire as soon as we got into the jungle.

"How are we getting out of this one?"

"We'll peel," Xian Li said, "And then fall back two hundred meters before retreating."

 	The peel is a tactic used by a small unit to make it look like  reinforcements are showing up, even when their numbers are actually falling back. Each one of us, one at a time, fell back about three to ten meters and then moved ten to twenty meters to the left or right before reengaging. This gave appearance that there were many more of us than there actually were. After each one of us had peeled, in the same order we began falling back one at a time about two hundred meters and waited for the rest of our lance. They had no idea if we had retreated or if we were simply holding our fire. It would buy us some time as they mulled over calling our bluff. Jet set some more explosive booby traps on our rally point before we began to fall back. We only made it about a minute before we heard the mine go off. They had either called our bluff or too stupid to realize we made one.

"Hiro!" shouted Xian Li, "You're up!"

Our pursuers were downwind of us… so was that village.

But I had a job to do. I was a fire bender. I was a soldier. That's what it means to be a soldier; that sometimes some must die so that others may live.

I set the jungle on fire.

Korah’s eyes that day, they looked just like Koko’s right now.

	Single file, they took us into Du Lin's Office. It must have been weird for the honor guards to see us, wearing their parade uniforms, carrying ceremonial swords, valiantly protecting the expensive royal carpets -- and here we were walking in still covered in gunpowder and dirt and sweat and blood, most of the later not even ours, and we were still wearing the same fatigues we went into the field with. All of our butts were green with chlorophyll except Chang who still had his naked ass fully exposed in the inner sanctums of the most important building in the entire nation. The fact that Du Lin didn’t care was most telling of all.

	We stood there in the office for nearly five minutes, unsure if we were allowed to talk, or take a seat given our present condition. And then Du Lin came into the room. Her brow was sweaty. Her hands and hair looked wet; I can guess that she had taken a moment in the washroom to collect herself.

 	Most plain were her eyes. None of that burning passion. None of that condescension. There were a lot of things her eyes said, but most of all it was fear. Not so petty now, is it, Du Lin? She looked at the honor guards standing silently in the corners of her office. "Go," she said, and they left us alone.

 "You're the only ones who know," She asked. "Is that correct?"

 "yes, ma'am." Hei Bai said.

 "Then you need to tell me everything that happened."

 Hei Bai paused for a moment to make up his words

 	He Spoke. "We inserted successfully five days ago. Our pilot was shot down during his dummy drop and gave his life for the success of the mission. We traversed the slope, and dug in that night on a hillside overlooking the objective. I personally reconnoitered the hostile hilltop and confirmed that they were the actual handlers that recruited the insurgents. three days later, at o' five hundred, we assaulted the hilltop using the morning fog as concealment. At o' five twenty two, we engaged fifty seven the hostiles and, with difficulty, all targets were reduced. All engagements were ceased by o' five thirty."

 "OK." Said Du-Lin. "When did you suspect they were Air Nomads?"

 "I was expecting them to begin torching their camp. There was also the fact that the fog was blown off of the hill at a very opportune moment. I didn't immediately put it together though. Koko was the first to act on her suspicion."

 "Corporal," Du Lin said. "How did you first suspect the identity of the insurgents' handlers?"

 "ma'am… I was suspicious because having been a soldier in the Air Sovereignty I knew how soldiers in the air kingdom fight. That, and the evidence that Hei Bai found."

 Du Lin asked, "Is she alright?"

 "I don't understand?"

 "Are you alright."

 Hei Bai interrupted, "Madam Chancellor, with all due respect, Koko is my soldier and it is up to my judgment whether or not she is fit for duty."

 "As you wish, Captain. And now we have some very, very tough decisions ahead of us," Du Lin said

 Hei Bai said, "I can offer you the same assessment as any of your political advisers"

 "I know you can"

	Hei Bai continued, "Then this is what they'll say. We have proof now of the agent provocateurs. If this was the Earth Kingdom like we 	had thought most of this time, we’d have to bring it before Republic City. If this was the Fire Nation, as originally thought, blackmail is all that it would take to get them to back down; they don't want to be bad-guys again. But the Air Sovereignty has just the opposite set of priorities. They'll find a way to spin this into their favor."

"So," Asked Du Lin, "We bury it then?"

"We hit that hilltop hard. They'll know we know, and now that their cover's blown they'll step up their attacks."

"So then we bring it to the Avatar and Republic City council, let the world know. Maybe they'll back down."

"Or maybe not."

Du Lin sighed, "Damned if I do, damned if I don't"

“Of course this doesn’t mean that someone else was responsible,” Thein Kyu said.

“Did you ever suspect that the Air Nomads were behind this?”

“No. They left no tells. But when did you stop suspecting the Fire Nation?”

 	“You Know those ‘jet’ fighter-bombers we’ve started using?” said Hei Bai. “those weren’t left over from the Nationalization. We’ve been purchasing Fire Nation weapons for the last several months now. Serial number scrubbed off of course, all in secret. At first we thought they were responsible for inciting the trouble makers and were trying to make a profit by playing both sides. Now that we know about the Nomads, they probably knew the Air Sovereignty was behind this from the beginning and have been supplying their rebel colony just to spite the Nomads.”

 	And it was at this moment enlightenment had been attained. The third eye peeled open. Hei Bai had said it before but until now I didn’t understand. Warfare is not based on deception. Warfare is based on perception. For every war that you see there is a different war, the real war, that is happening behind the scenes. For every war about spreading Fire Nation ideals, the real war is about maintaining resources for a topheavy economy. For every war about uniting the Earth Kingdom, it’s really about political power brokering.  Republic City comes to stop an ethnic conflict, it’s really about a pipeline and access to the seaboard. Two countries fight over some disputed islands with a population of fifty people and invoke ‘sovereignty’ and ‘people’s right to self determination.’ It’s really about one country trying to distract from problems at home with war abroad, and the other is just trying to save face in the international community.

 	I had wondered why so many peacekeeping operations ended in complete failure. torching that village for the greater good? well, the war ended in disaster. It should have been obvious. It was precisely because of that lack of selfish motivation that the politicians had no reason to win. You fight a ‘war on terror’ and if you win your country gets access to a whole tin mine. You would do everything to win that war. But take casualties and spend billions of Yuan to get nothing out of it other than the moral high ground? Of course you’d leave the job unfinished. And if your goal is only to play the hero so you get better treatment at the Republic City negotiating table, then you don’t even have to try to win the war -- you only have to show up.

 	And now here is Jia. Caught between the Fire Nation and the Air Sovereignty. The Fire Nation sticking their neck out to supply a rogue nation arms? I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being used as pawns in some else’s political squabble. I realized then, too, that’s why we were probably going to lose this war. Because despite our disagreements Du Lin was not a corrupt politician with an ulterior motive. She was a genuine and true believer in her cause with everything to gain but nothing to lose.

 I began to feel nauseous and the room began to spin.

  “...are you OK, Hiro,” someone asked?

 Koko exploded, "So that's it then? We're just 'at war' with the Air Sovereignty? Just like that, and what do you suppose is going to happen to your little country? How in Yue's name are we expected to do anything about this?"

 "This doesn't change your mission one single iota. You perform counter insurgency. You will continue to perform counterinsurgency. We are not at war with the Air Sovereignty."

 	I don't know why, but of all the things that Du Lin said, this is the one that made me lose my temper, "with all due respect, ma'am, you can call this war whatever you want. You can call it counterinsurgency. You can call it a limited conflict. And you can even call it a police action, but make no mistake: this is war, whether you like it or not. Those that have bought the farm fighting your war are just as dead regardless of whatever the spin masters decide to call it."

 "That's enough. You're all dismissed."

Hei Bai spoke to me as we drove back to our FOB

 	"I understand what you said today, but I want you to know that we are not at war. Not yet. There are other mercs recruited by Jia – almost like you – and do you know where they end up? Personal bodyguards, protecting farms. But Du Lin asked me to make a dream team. Pick anyone I want. I chose you. I'll tell you why: our goal was to put down a war before it started. We can still prevent this war from spreading, keep the situation from deteriorating. Believe me, Hiro, Some noble work can still be done. Help me do the right thing."

 	When we returned to the camp it was in a state of celebration. Tacky party lights, candles, the fresh BBQ’d meat. The natives were engaged in some sort of happy ritual dancing and the officers looked the other way when canteens of the sorghum wine made their way out of the natives’ vest pockets. Because while we were attacking the handlers themselves, the air force and the army regulars hit a terrorist staging ground across the Jian border. Only a company of men (with the aid of bombers) had managed to kill an entire brigade -- thousands -- of terrorists.

 But they were equally excited to see us, because they had gotten word that we had really taken the fight to ‘em and killed the handlers. None of them knew the truth though. We couldn’t tell them. But I’m sure they would know soon enough.

 	I laid my weary head down to sleep and when i stopped tossing and turning I had another dream. Another mefloquine dream, like a fever dream. The ones that are solid and vivid and don't evaporate away when you wake up, like the morning fog shone upon by the rising Sun. I dreamed of my mother, and I was a child again. No. Not a dream. It was a memory.

 	We were in our apartment. It was the same as any other in Ba Sing Sae -- a sea of identical concrete high-rises, each one a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy consuming block after block. I don't remember how I got there, but I remember I was eight years old and it was a blue skied summer morning. Cicadas were busy buzzing outside and I watched a mote of dust suspended in a beam of sunlight coming through the kitchen window. I watched it too long and didn't pay attention to where I was going. I remember tripping into the counter and knocking a piece of pottery onto the floor, and it cracked and shattered into half a dozen pieces.

 "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

 Mother looked at me quizzically.

  "It's OK, Hiro. There's no reason to be ashamed."

 She scooped up the pieces from the floor and put them in the corner of the countertop.

 "It's better this way," she said. She grabbed another piece of pottery from the window sill. "Come and see!"

 	It was a beautiful piece of porcelain, but the most beautiful part of it was irregular lines of gold running through it. No two lines were the same, and it ran like a spider's web, or a series of tributaries in the delta of a river. It possessed a beautiful asymmetry; it was beautiful because it was imperfect.

 	"Broken pottery is put back together with gold, and is more beautiful than when it was broken. You can't build it pottery like this, because it would look fake; you'd know right away. The pottery can only be made and then broken, before it's put back together. It's an art called Kintsugi."

 She showed me another bowl. It was put back together like the first one, but with iron staples. And even though all the pieces fit together perfectly, the result was ugly. No beauty. Only function.

 	"Do you understand, Hiro? If something is broken, and it is put together again with care, it is more beautiful when it is made whole because it was broken, not in spite of it. Even an ugly bowl, when put back together, is prettier than a well-made and untarnished one. Many people experience hardships, Hiro. But if they learn from them and overcome them, and are made whole instead of being made bitter or simply remain destroyed, they are better than they were before. You might experience hardships, too, Hiro; things in life that are difficult and scary. And when you do, I want you to remember this."

 "Like when father leaves us?" I asked.

 She swallowed, "…yes, like when father leaves us."

 It's kind of funny now that I think about it. What a dumb question for me to ask. Those times weren't anywhere near as bad as the times that he came home.


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EIGHT
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"With difficulty, huh? That's the best Hei Bai could say about my end of the stick," Peng complained to me as he walked across the parade ground that morning.

"Since when do you care about my opinion?"

"Because you're smart and you know exactly what I'm talking about."

Damn him. Sure, we were getting paid to kill. I can even do that with a clean conscience. But it’s a whole other thing to enjoy it!

"You were showboating," I said to Peng. "But hey, I guess you deserve to, after all; half of people on the FOB now believe that you're the Oni of Si Wong. Feels good, huh?"

"Don't joke about that," He said. He paused for a minute. "But it does have a certain ring to it, huh? I've been accused of worse things. This time it might actually be true."

He wrapped his checkered Si Wong bandanna around his neck. I noticed for the first time that in the middle was a bullet hole and it was stained with blood. I emptied the rounds from my scattergun and placed them in my ammo box.

"You know about Chang's new fame? They're calling him Baboon. Someone made a patch of a baboon with a bright red butt. Han, from Dagger Seven slipped into hi ruck the other day. I really want to be their when he finds it, you know? Just to see what he thinks."

"You shouldn't take credit for something like that, even if you did it."

"What, the patch?"

"No, the Oni."

"Who says I'm not? You never know. It's bad form to brag about doing anything in spec-ops. Like the ancient generals said, 'appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are week, for this is the axiom of success, and all war is based upon deception.'"

"Why do you keep that trophy then?" I said, waving index finger in a circle around my neck. "That's a little macabre, even for us."

"What are you saying?"

"Well there's that bullet hole, so it must've come from some poor idiot you bagged in the dessert. Unless you're unsporting enough to grab a trophy off someone else's kill.''

I didn't know what got into Peng. He froze. His lips trembled. His eyes quivered. For a moment I'm reminded of the last I saw of Rando.

	I wasn't in pain, so much as confused. I barely had time to react the fist that came crashing into the side of my skull and sent me straight into the ground. The sky and everything I saw was spinning, but I could make out Peng standing above me, rolling up his sleeves.

All I could think to say was, "Why?"

The ground erupted from beneath me, launching me back to my feet. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me close.

He swung wide again for my face, but I managed to catch his fist in my hand before he struck me. I look into his eyes and the seconds drag. For the first time since we met he looks… broken.

"Peng, have you lost your freakin' mind! For Yue's sake, we both fought in the Si Wong desert."

I began to arc electricity between my fingers, but then I saw the rock he was hiding, floating behind his back.

	"You're a mercenary, Peng," I said. "You don't have values. You don't have grudges. You're just doing your job for the money, just like me or Koko. You want to have to explain to your employer why one of their assets is in the hospital when the time comes for them to cut the checks? Make the rational decision."

He froze for a second, mulling it over, having to deal with the reality of the situation. Then he let go of me, dropping the rock and stormed off. He disappeared into his tent and I heard the sound Peng punching his locker until his knuckles bled.

Then I heard the sound of slow, sarcastic clapping behind me. It was… Hei Bai!

"Bravo, young man."

"Is there something I can do for you, sir?"

"Just answer a question for me."

"What?"

"Why do you let him push you around like that?"

"He wasn't worth the effort''

"Effort? He wouldn't even take any effort. I know all about what you can do. Who you are. What’s your real name?”

“You know my birth name is Hou Yi.”

“No, not the name your father gave you. Your real name.”

“It is Hiro.”

“You know, Hou Yi, you really disappoint me sometimes. If you just--”

“Keep it up,” I said, “and I’ll do to you what Peng was gonna do to me.”

And at that Hei Bai turned around and walked away, throwing one of those ‘good-bye’ waves over his shoulder.

All alone I wondered around the camp. I didn’t want to go anywhere in particular, but I started wonder if maybe Peng was right. I’d have enough money to finally retire.

	I could always go to the Earth Kingdom again. I certainly had enough money for it. I could be the richest man in the landfill. Back in the land of the smog. The land where the children are run over in the gutter and everyone ignores it to go about their business while their not-actually-concrete styrofoam buildings crumble around them. The land where you don’t actually own anything and the government can repossess all that you have at a moment’s notice.

I have another memory of when I was eight. I asked my mother, "mamma, mamma! why do I have to go to school?"

"You have to get a good education, so when you grow up you can work a good job, something that you'll like to do."

"But mamma! that's just like school! I don't wanna do that forever! What if I don't want to work?"

"That's crazy talk. You must work, Hou Yi. The government won't allow such things, so you need to keep going to school. all your friends are there!"

"But dad says the government will give you a job even if you never went to school."

"Not a good one. You don't want to be like those criminals stealing from the sewer to make cooking oil, do you?"

"No... But what if you can't work a job or won't work one, mamma? what does the government do then?"

"That's..." Mother smiled awkwardly, "that's none of my business! It's not my business..."

	No! If I am going to retire I am going to retire well. When I was security aboard that cargo ship we had often made port in the Fire Nation. I remember Fire Fountain City and the others like it. They were cities of insomniacs -- alcoholics and workaholics alike. And unlike the cities of the Earth Kingdom they were always clean. The thick haze of smog had been replaced by blinding neon. The grandeur was nauseating. I remember a profound sense of vertigo trying to take in the skyline from ground level. Whether in the Earth Kingdom or the battlefield, I spent my life living with a paper bag over my head and I was being exposed to colors I had not even known existed, all telling me to spend, spend, spend.

	In reality it was still the most tranquil place I’d ever been. The office salarymen would work themselves to death willingly without the need of suicide prevention nets, even. some one once said, "a rock does not throw itself, but fire consumes all unless quenched." The Fire Nation culture was very civil because civility meant survival.

	You wouldn’t think that from the news. It was always hysteria of crime this, youth gangs out of control that. That’s the problem with fire bending, though. After the genocide a whole generation of people promised to never practice fire bending again. Now they were reaping their rewards as the next generation grew up covered in bubble wrap and discovering they had powers of destruction at their fingertips, but were never given any practice or discipline in controlling it.

	At the end of the day, that only made it on the news for being the exception. Oh Yue, I hated living in the cities. With enough money I could live out somewhere peaceful in the Fire Nation countryside. Where the mountains meet the seas. Of course I’d need enough money for a forger, I’d have to change my name again. Starting over was the point, after all, wasn’t it? Yes. I’d fight this war a little longer, and then I’d never have to fight or want again.

Then I heard a voice that broke my train of thought. A voice that was calling my name. I saw a native soldier beckoning to me.

“Hey! You Hiro? Get over here, friend!”

	I approached him and he disappeared inside a rather large tent. I followed him inside the flaps and no sooner had I entered then I was before a sea of cheering faces while a shot glass was forced into my hand and a half dozen natives were patting me on the back and rubbing the back of my head. One of them poured baijiu into my cup until it overflowed as the other’s began to shout, “Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!” I took the shot and it burned on the way down. The cheering resumed with greater applause.

“We heard about your mission. Everyone has,” one of the natives said. “It’s about time someone gave it to those monsters!”

“Three cheers for Hiro!”

“Forward Together! Hip hip hoorah! Forward Together! Hip hip Hoorah! Forward Together! Hip hip Hoorah!”

“You might be an outsider, Hiro, but today you are one of us.”

“An outsider?” I asked. “We’re both yellow skinned and I am definitely no water bender; aren’t I one of you already?”

The natives looked at me with blank faces before they burst into tears laughing at me.

“No. No Hiro, things aren’t that simple over here like they are in the mainland. City folk never seem to understand.”

“You don’t like the city folk?” I asked, sheepishly

“Do you mean like in the Capital City? Of course not!” one of them said. “Don’t worry, they don’t like you either.”

“I thought Du Lin was trying to make the country a better place for everyone…”

There was more laughing, “forget about Du Lin. Du Lin is not the problem.”

	“My son,” one of them said, “He went to the city looking for work. He is a hard worker. He came back to his village with tears in eyes. He only wanted to work a job to send money back home but everywhere he went he was spit on and no one would hire him. In his own country! Can Du Lin pass a law that says ‘you must be kind to others’? I wish it were so but it is not.”

“But what of the schools,” I asked.

	Another answered, “Schools? My brother tried to go to school. I was helping to pay for him, but the closest school was ten miles away and he had to walk there each day. My father could not afford the loss of his work in our village. What good do these schools do us when no one can go to them? I have joined the military to help support my father.”

“I have an education and the franchise,” a third said. “I even voted in the Party before the war began because I believed in the cause. I still do. But I will not let our Liberation movement be co-opted by trouble makers.”

A wave of voice saying “aye!” rang out.

“Then why do you all fight for the Water Tribe?” I asked.

	“Fight for the Water Tribe? Never! We fight for our land and our lives today. And we proudly do it alongside the Water Tribe soldiers who are fighting for the same reason. We are glad to fight even alongside the likes of outsiders like you because you are willing to risk your blood for our safety and our homes. This is our land. Once this war is long over and done, then we will return to taking back our country. But we must do so as men and not with fire or bullets or hand grenades.”

	I continued to drink with them. As they celebrated and the conversation changed to a more pleasant topic I asked if Chang had celebrated with them. He had earlier, they said. They tried to get the baboon to be the symbol of our team, but Hei Bai had very firmly said no. As if to smother the joke he released an insignia for our unit in the form of a large bird of prey…. Perhaps even the Magnificent Peng. still, as I left the tent I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong to be here.

After sobering up enough to check my watch, I hurried over to Hei Bai’s tent. Today was the day of the big reveal, where Du Lin would present her protest of the war to Republic City and reveal the Air Nomads involvement in the war.

"Has it started yet?" Buno rushed into the room and squatted down next to the telescreen.

"Not yet," Hei Bai said as he adjusted the tuning of the tele's antenna.

"Has anyone seen Koko?" Asked Peng as he walked into the room and sat down, doing everything he could to not make eye contact with me. He had wrapped his right fist in a bandage.

"Not sure," said one of the soldiers gathered around the telescreen, "I think she's drinking her paycheck."

“Maybe she’s off sulking with Thein Kyu?”

She didn't want to know. She didn't want to see.

"Almost got it," Hei-Bai said. "it's tricky, tuning into a signal bouncing on the ionosphere."

	"—and I would like to appeal to this council, and to the Avatar himself that diplomatic action be taken. That the rights of our nation, our people, upheld. That we be treated as equals. We ask for no special treatment. We do not even ask that any action be taken: I only ask that a single action be ceased."

A plethora of whining vomited forward. Whoever told us when the council's meeting would be was off by a whole time-zone.

	I could make out from the grainy black and white image the large Republic City council chamber. The whole room was full. Du Lin stood there before the other council members with her aids behind. It looked more like she was on trial than an open forum of discussion. With the graininess of the feed and the black and white color, I could barely tell a single person apart from one another.

"First thing I'm buying… color telescreen," Peng once said when we were talking about what we'd do with our contract money, if we lived that long.

"Color tele exists?" Chang asked, genuinely surprised.

Koko said, "Yeah but it's stupid."

"Says you!"

"C'mon Peng, no one films in color, so you've paid twice the price for what's really a black and white telescreen."

"What about the toons? Those are in color."

	"Well…" said Chang, "If I wanted to see a toon, I'd rather go to one of those theaters like they have in the cities. Big screen. Friends. Live band. Why would anyone ever want to sit around their home and watch toons on a tiny screen all by themselves? Besides, don’t have electric power in my village yet anyway"

Back in the present day, I saw one of the councilors on the TS rise to their feet. An air nomad.

	"This is an outrage!" He shouted, slamming his fist on the table. "There is no proof here that my government was responsible for these series of attacks. You admit readily that the majority of the insurgents were members of the Earth Kingdom by heritage, living on your border. But you find one group of Air Nomads and then you all assume that we are responsible? I thought the world learned its lesson after my people were slaughtered down to a single man.

	You have no proof, none, that the Air Sovereignty was responsible aside from those men’s heritage. How terrible must your nation be that even air bender civilians will take up arms against it? What kind of a world is it where a state still exists in this day and age that only grants the right to vote to the Water Tribe and denies voting to the Air Nomads."

	He turned to the other councilors, "My fellow councilmen, this velvet genocide has gone on long enough. If my people are being oppressed – oppressed to the point that they would need to take up arms against their rulers – then the Air Sovereignty must, and will, use all paths available to her to protect her people both at home, and abroad. We can now all only pray for a peaceful resolution this crisis. The Air Sovereignty votes in favor of the motion for further sanctions..."

I left the room after that. These things drag on for hours, but it was the only part I had to see. Buno followed me out.

"So that's it then, huh? We're finished."

"Nothing is ever finished," He said. "We are all eternal."

"Cut it out, Buno. So how are we supposed to fight against *that*" I said, stabbing my index finger Eastward at some imaginary army just over the horizon. "How are we supposed to win that kind of war?"

"One battle at a time, Brother." He gave a big hearty laugh "I thought you told me we were already at war, eh? Then nothing has changed, friend."

"Not a war like this. Not like this. Hei Bai said that our job was to stop war. To snuff it out. To stop the dying before it really started. I've seen it many times and I don't want it to happen here."

	"It is a strange world we live in. Those that start wars, those that put the world out of balance, that send countless waves of faceless men to their doom are seen as heroes. Those that truly win are those that manage to prevent the slaughter from ever occurring, and yet they are usually forgotten to history. But make no mistake, the ones who go unsung in songs and succeed before effort and death are needed are the only true winners. This is the Tao. I am not one of those people, but at least I have decided to put trust into Hei Bai. You should know he has big plans for you too."

"Why aren't you one of those people, then?" I asked. "You're strong and wise. Why not you instead of Hei Bai?"

"Then you do not know the true meaning of leadership. There is a tale among the Water Tribe who have not forgotten the old  ways, passed down from father to child. The Natives here tell nearly the same story.

	Ten hunters make camp on a hill. As one of them climbs to the summit, he is overcome by the beauty he sees around him and begins to dance. The others wish to dance too, but by himself the man on the hill looks like a fool. But one of the nine has the courage to overcome his sense of embarrassment and climbs the hill to see the first hunter. When he reaches the summit, he too understands the beauty and begins dancing. Now there is not one hunter, but two! The others no longer feel embarrassed and make the climb and then they all begin dancing.

Do you see? There is honor in service. Sometimes to lead, you must know when to follow."

	As I laid my head down to sleep that night I thought of Buno’s words. They gave us all mefloquine pills to prevent malaria. Mefloquine has some unfortunate mental side effects. Irritability. Possibility of hallucination. But mostly intense and vivid nightmares and waking dreams. Of course, these are also all the symptoms of combat stress. I had a mefloquine dream that night. They say if you die in a dream you wake up, so That was my first clue I wasn't the center of that dream. He looked like me at first. Wore all my clothes. Carried my shotgun and a nihonto blade. I thought it was me at first from the hair. When he turned around, I realized it was my father.

	My father didn't much look like me. Growing up, everyone I know remarked how much I looked like my mother, Azusa. Of course, my father was never around enough for them to have a real reference point. There were, however, two things he gave me: His green eyes, and his jet-black hair. And now I was watching him running around with a twelve-gauge scattergun, shooting at monsters.

	They came from everywhere, all at once, thousands of them. But they were weak. One by one, he destroyed them. And when the scattergun ran out of ammo, he switched to his sword. And now the monsters we're getting much closer, close enough to touch him, slash him with their claws or bite him. That didn't stop him; he cut them down like chaff. But eventually he makes a mistake. Eventually he gets tired, and then one little tiny wound after another. Eventually the monsters will win.


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NINE
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	The six of us silently loaded into the autogyro. Hei Bai told us that for now nothing would change. We'd protect the farms, as usual. But the rats grow bolder every day. In the past the attacks had always been aimed at the farms and homesteads and Native villages. Now the people of the cities were being rocked to sleep by the sounds of carbombs. The sounds of Party protests replaced the cicadas in the day. In the villages, too, the raids had turned into a fullborn offensive. Whatever the Air Nomads were doing to compel  their minions, they were attacking in force. They came in greater numbers and no longer would they run at the first sight or sound of the aeroplane or Hummingbird.

	Dear reader, I'm sorry if I've bored you with tales of childhood memories, fortune cookie motivational speeches, or oh-so-touching anecdotes. Fear not, for all of that was about to fly out the window. As soon as the bullets started flying -- Thein Kyu’s past, Koko’s loyalty, Peng, whether it was right for the Water Tribe to be here, whether it was right for me to be here -- those thoughts all disappear and become meaningless.

"Jian one delta, this is dao seven actual. We want you to keep orbiting the battlefield until further notice. Break. Jian five delta: dao seven actual. Set down and maintain stop line at grid alpha – six. Over."

"Dao seven: jian five. Wilco."

	"Dao Seven, this is jian One," Hei Bai shouted over the drone of the engine and the wind rushing past us. He stuck out his head and leaned outside the autogyro to get a better view, holding himself in with a single hand. Several bullets slammed next to his head, but he didn't flinch. "I don't know if you can see this from the OP, but we're about to orbit past grid alpha – six. The drop zone is hot. I say again, the drop zone is hot. I am requesting permission to drop in with jian five. We are fifteen seconds out and it will take another two minutes to circle back around to the LZ if we do not drop now. Over."

Several more bullets slammed into the fuselage of the autogyro, one of them going straight through the pilot's windscreen.

"Roger, jian One. You are clear to drop."

Hei Bai stepped into the cockpit and pointed to the pilot where he wanted to drop

"Get tactical!" Buno screamed. "Boots hit the dirt in five seconds!"

	The autogyro swooped in low and lifted its nose to halt the descent, like a bucking stallion rearing up on its two hind legs. Two meters from the ground, the six of us jumped. Before I could even touch the dirt I could feel bullets whizzing past my face. I hit the ground hard and rolled. Rolled my ankle, too. Suck it up, soldier. I looked over my shoulder and I could see that our ride wasted no time in leaving as soon as we were on the ground.

"Good morning, dagger five!" Hei Bai said between bursts of burpgun fire. "You guys need a hand?"

"How do you know what kind of morning it is?" Said Dagger Five's squad sergeant.

I looked to my right and blasted two insurgents that popped out of the tall grass.

"They're trying to make it out through this gully. Don't let 'em!"

	We all got as low to the ground as we could and fired upon at anything that moved through the gully. Everything in the gully fired back. Bullets whizzed by us. A bullet goes clean through the arm of one of Dagger Fife's soldiers, but he just keeps firing. They came in waves, one after the other, and began lining up at fallen tree about eighty meters away. I went to reload, and a bullet ripped the magazine from my hand. A bullet grazes Peng's cheek and he only seems to get more pissed.

"Dao five to all air support, we are taking heavy fire and are about to be overrun. "

"Read you loud and clear, dao five. Inbound, ten seconds"

	One of the two hummingbird gunships -- Hammer-Six -- swoops by the gully, and turns its left broadside to face the attackers on the tree. For a single second the shooting stops. A second later it starts again. Four machineguns firing simultaneously upon the insurgents from less than twenty meters away. The quad-machine gun makes a sound like the sky ripping in half. The sky holds this time; this time it's the insurgents being ripped in half. And from twenty meters,  twenty men are turned hamburger meat in less than twenty seconds.

" Thanks, hammer six. Good guns." Dagger Five's LT says over the radio.

"These guys are pushing hard on us today," Chang says.

"That's because their handlers are pushing hard on them." Hei Bai says.

"You sure they're here?" asks Peng.

"Absolutely." Thein Kyu answers.

There's a whizzing noise, and a trail of smoke snakes into the air. A rocket barely misses the second gunship.

"That's them. I'm sure of it."

Buno says "Sir, I recommend we neutralize that threat to the gunship."

"Good call Buno, that's what we'll do." Hei Bai turned to the young LT, "Can you hold the line from here?"

"Absolutely Captain."

"OK boys, let's haul it. Wedge formation and keep it tight.”

“Animals are everywhere today," Thein Kyu says.

	So we get in formation and run. We ignore the bullets snapping past our ears and run. I ignore the searing pain in my ankle and run. Someone aims a rifle at me but without breaking pace I hose him down with fire, and run. We're so close to our mark. We're so close to our kill…

Sunraker Two, the high orbiting machine cannon gunship, switches its aim to the source of the AA fire. We're close enough to feel blasts go off, not just hear them.

"this is Sunraker Two" the radio cackles "I'm raining pain all over these guys but I can't seem to get a clean hit."

"Jian one to Sunraker two, hold your fire. They are bending your shells off target. We are coming in for the kill on foot. Say again, hold you fire. How copy?"

"Solid copy, Jian one. switching targets."

We were less than one hundred meters away. Spitting distance.

Hei Bai says to Koko "I'm gonna need you to start blowing these rockets off target, can you do that?""Yes sir!"

Puh-FWOOOOOOOOOSH! Another rocket takes to the skies.

"Koko!"

"on it."

The rocket accelerates straight for Hammer Six, the second helicopter gunship. Hammer Six pulls hard to the right to maneuver, but not hard enough. Koko summons a tiny monsoon, and the rocket curves out of the way at the last moment. Too close.

Except there's one little problem. In maneuvering out of the way of the rocket, Hammer-Six has now maneuvered straight into the path of Sunraker-Two's fire.

	It's the usual three round burst. The first shot goes straight into the canopy. Pilot doesn't feel a thing. It's an instant and painless death. He's turned into chili. Second round goes in between the propellers, missing the gunship. Third round strikes the tail rotor.

	The tail snaps off and is hanging by a thread. There's dense black smoke spewing from the bird and she's spinning all over the place. You probably don't think a machine can scream in pain. It can. There's a blood curdling screech as the engine desperately fights for life, trying to correct itself by pumping extra torque into a limb that no longer exists.

"I've been hit! I've been hit!" the co-pilot screams. "Pilot's dead. I can't get her to rock back out, I'm losing her."

Hammer-Six wobbles in the air for a moment and then begins knifing sideways through the sky, screaming so close over our heads that we duck. She flies right over the farmstead village, and then falls out of the sky like a brick.

	Hei Bai or Buno didn't have to say a single word. We ran straight for the crash site, didn't even bother to get in formation or stay together, we just ran as fast as we could. The bird landed in the middle of the town, right in the open courtyard. Couldn't ask for a better ambush. Chance of getting killed – high. Chance the crew was still alive – not very good. But that didn’t matter. Combat oddly can make you lose your sense of self preservation fast. The lives of those around you matter far more than your own, regardless of whether or not you hate their guts. Maybe it's why Koko could kill her former countrymen, or why Peng hasn't killed me yet.

Even then, we also know what would happen if those animals managed to capture the crew alive. I know for a fact it's why we all chose to run to that chopper. But it was Kyu that ran faster than any of us to that hummingbird.

	Thein Kyu arrived first and as soon as we caught up to him we turned 180 degrees and got down in the dirt. Hei Bai steps into the hummingbird's fuselage. Other than the missing tail she looks intact. Looks are deceiving. The crash has broken apart all her insides and jet fuel is tricking into the crew cabin. The smell is everywhere.

	"Hiro, get in here" Hei Bai says. He looks at the gunner, still strapped into the crash-seat. He checks his eyes for alertness and sees that he's mostly OK. He steps into the cockpit. There's blood and viscera everywhere. Co-pilot's covered in it. Half of it's his. Hei Bai looks at me.

"I need your help. There's no time to worry about spinal or any of that. We're gonna have to stabilize him here, but we need to drag him out of the seat. Can you do that? I need your help."

"I can." I said.

	Hei Bai, secures his neck in a sort of head-lock with the co-pilots arms, and I unbuckle him from the seat. He gives me a three two one, and then Hei Bai drags him into the cabin. He leaves a trail of blood on the way out. Or I should say we tried. We’ve gotten his torso out of the chair and onto the fuselage, but his leg is entrapped in crushed metal of the cockpit somewhere that we can’t see. We roll him over and Hei Bai gets to work.

“S-sorry guys. Not a metal bender,” Peng apologizes.

"We need to stop the bleeding. Buno’s taking control of the fight for now. Oh, Yue, Hiro. There's sparks everywhere. I need you to start squelching them, or we're toast."

"Yes, sir."

It's starting outside. The first staccato of reports.

"What's your name, buddy? Qajak? I'm so sorry, but hey there are worse names right? Do you know your blood type? B positive, got it. That’s right, stay positive. Hey! Look at me! I need you to look at me…"

	I'm running around the cabin trying to snuff out the sparks. I can feel every single one of them. like little tiny pins and needles. Like every single star at once in the night sky. Putting them out is like to plug hundreds of little tiny leaks in a boat with nothing but your fingers.

	A bullet strikes the fuselage and Hei Bai starts to get worried. He unstraps the native gunner (who only has a broken leg and concussion) and sets him back in his chair behind his quad gun; says he's alert enough to actually aim and pull the trigger in the general direction of bad guys.

"That's it. Nice and easy. All you have to do is sit in the chair and hold the trigger."

	And Hei Bai goes back to his healing with what little water he has. After stripping off the man’s blood soaked clothes with his knife, he finds a gaping hole in his abdomen. With nothing to stop the bleeding he begins scooping up handful after handful of loam from the ground and stuffing them into the wound. Hei Bai wipes sweat from his brow, covering his forehead in mud and blood. They say the best healers were female, but it's become expected of Hei Bai by now to do the unconventional…

	I fire at a couple of insurgents and as soon as I take my time to fire at them I can feel the sparks coming back. Kerosene and blood are mixing on the floor. It smells like a motor pool and slaughterhouse. The machine gun barks to life, hosing down the edge of the farm land.

"I can't hold much longer, Hei Bai!"

"I know I'm working on, Hiro. Keep doing what you're doing. "

Hei Bai looks at Qajak to see how he's doing. For now, he's good enough. Hei Bai runs outside the helicopter and grabs Peng.

	They run under fire to the nearest house, with Peng doing his best to shield them. He gets into a good horse stance and… WHAM! He blasts a whole pile of dirt through the side of the house. Peng feels the plumbing beneath his feet and tears it ups, sending a geyser of water into the air.

	A bullet catches me across the side of my thigh and I cringe in pain, falling over into the cabin. As soon as I do I see a spark go flying right into the edge of the kerosene puddle flowing over the sides of cabin door. I summon every bit of strength I can and hold back a massive wall of flame before it gets to the gas tank.

	There's a deafening hissing noise and I'm knocked back down again into the cabin as Hei Bai throws as much water as he can into that fire. He's running back across the street to the hummingbird, ignoring all the shots around him. And he's carrying what looks like twelve dozen gallons of water with him. He turns as a an insurgent opens up on him, catching all the bullets inside of a massive water bolus before Peng strikes the troublemaker in the skull with a rock. knocking us around in a portable tsunami, Hei Bai washes out all the kerosene jet fuel and puts out every spark. For a moment, I think i'm inside one of those electric washing machines that all the tuhao have now. But I've never been so glad to see Hei Bai in all my life.

	Meanwhile Koko, Buno, and Chang are outside doing their best. Peng has chosen to stay in the building across the street, turning the second floor of the house into his own personal pillbox. Hei Bai, the two flight-crew, and I are inside doing whatever we can. And then the machine gun jams.

"I-I can't get it to clear!"

"Chang, gunner; fix that thing on the double." Buno orders. "Hiro, Koko; come with me."

"What's the order, sarge?" Asks Koko.

"There’s going to be some soldiers sneaking up on us right about about now,” Thein Kyu says.

"How do you know?"

"Trust me.”

"What make you think they aren't at the end of the street, setting up a shot with their rocket launcher?" I ask.

Koko shakes her head.

	"If they wanted to do that," Says Thein Kyu, "They would have done it already. If I were still on the other side, I would want to take your pilots. I would want your bodies as trophies, believe me. I know I’d be able to reach you long before those armored cars show up to rescue you."

	Oh, and now Peng is getting over run. Several insurgent's make their way into his house. I hear glass shatter and turn to see Peng jumping out of the second story window. He tucks and rolls and then bellows as he puts all the might he can into bending. He squashes the foundations of the house and it completely collapses. An after-action assessment would confirm the bodies of fifteen insurgents trapped in the house when it collapsed.

	Peng now runs to the Helicopter shielding himself with dirt and stone. He reaches up and now he's throwing up walls of dirt left and right as fast as he can to keep the insurgents out. Doesn't help that they've got an earth bender or two with them, and they're tearing the walls down almost as fast as Peng puts them up.

	Gripping my rifle tight, and with a little bit of a limp, I lurched my way with my three compatriots to the outside of the hummingbird.  Sure enough we see them squatting and crouching their way to our hummingbird from the rear. A few natives, and two other men, foreigners, who look much more composed. I immediately open fire. One of these two men blows the gun right out of Buno's arms. Koko gets a shot square into two of the natives soldiers and then her gun goes empty. Great.

	I hit one of the air benders in the the neck, and am then slammed into the back of Hummingbird. I try to get back up and am slammed by a gust of wind headfirst over and over again. Thein Kyu is a little occupied, trying to skedaddle sideways as he Boogie Woogies like some Ember Island teenie bopper. He fires wildly from the hip as he strafes to the side, hoping to get out of the main line of fire. The other Air Bender now aims his rifle to fire straight into my chest.

	A blast of wind and sand from Koko hits his mark directly in the air benders face, or I should say his gun’s ejection port. He closes his eyes and grimaces as the first and only shot goes off and impacts beside me, his gun all jammed up.  He clears it but Koko is faster. A lot faster. She forgets reloading and draws her pistol. pops of the top of soldiers head before he can kill me, and then she sweeps up a cloud of dust between us and them. Buno throws his Kukri into the other air bender’s shoulder and it guides my arc of lightning. The air bender’s danse macabre is the Fire Fountain City Jitterbug.

But as the dust clears Thein Kyu has stopped dancing and is just doing the crabwalk as the remaining insurgents stand over him and take aim at all of us.

	As I look up I first only see a blurry silhouette that eclipses the midday sun. arms outstretched. he’s a whirling dervish. Vaulting over the Hummingbird behind me, the Great Peng takes flight. His left arm comes downward, flattening all the sand below him until I can see the reflection of the insurgents on its surface. Flattening the surface into.. Glass. He lands on his little ice patch and slides across it. Slides past it, conserve his windmilling rotation with a roll till he stops in the soft uncompressed soil. But his right arm continues the forward rotation, pulling the glass with him like it were a ball pulled by centripetal force from the end of the string. I close my eyes knowing what comes next.

Screams

And then silence

There are what used to be five men. Their bodies mangled beyond recognition. Sliced into ribbons.

“Well, come on now!” Peng proclaims. “We’re all waiting on ye’!”

All in a day's work.

Hei Bai rounds the corner, “What? What I miss?”

He sees the mince meat, “oh unholy Vaatu,” and then a string of profanities.

All in a day's work.

We run back to the front of the Hummingbird, and then Chang says, "It was a dud round. Hang fire. Case-head separation, I think. Shu opened the pan to check if there was maybe a piece of brass caught behind the bolt, and then, it just, explodes."

	So here's what we had to work with. Our machine- gunner was now missing a chunk of his hand. Our own machine-gunner, Chang, only brought a rifle. The quad machine gun is absolutely totaled. Koko's out of ammo. Hei Bai's out of ammo. I'm almost out of Ammo. Buno has ammo but would have to spend the next five minutes looking for wherever his gun went without getting shot (he forgot to bring a sling this time too. Ha!).  Peng has run out of ammo and has resorted to throwing rocks. And to make matters worse, the co-pilot looks like he could go into shock at any moment.

"When's the casevac coming?" Peng asks Hei-Bai.

"That's what we are," He answers. “Armored cars are coming but it’s probably gonna be another five minutes for them to screen for all the antitank.”

"I have an idea" Koko says and turns to the gunner. "I don't know how to operate this thing. It autogyrates, yes?"

Gunner nods. "It's not an autogyro -- strictly speaking -- but it can on descent. that's how Qajak landed her"

"Then disengage the rotors"

Gunner moves to the cockpit and pulls something that looks like the emergency or parking break lever in the Satomobile that you drive every day. It detaches the rotor-hub of the propellers from the drive shaft so that they spin freely.

"Everybody get on board or get left behind!"

Koko stands in the middle of the cabin. She squats into a horse stance and takes a deep breath. The insurgents tear down the last of Peng's walls and he's too exhausted to put them back up again.

	Spitting distance. A young insurgent runs right for us firing his rifle, close enough to see the whites of his eyes. The gunner’s one handed belch of burpgun fire cuts him down and he rolls over a few times landing face up just in front of our hummingbird. A little too close.

But Chang stairs straight into his eyes. Fixated. Like he’s in a trance.

Koko throws her arms skyward and groans. I put myself between her and the insurgents and begin firing. There's a rush of wind.

"Sniper!"

Once a again, for what feels like the ten dozenth time today, I'm being knocked to the floor. It's the weight of Peng's body crashing into me. He takes the bullet straight to the chest and falls backward into me, knocking us both into the cabin.

	There's a final rush of wind and the propellers spin up. We have lift off. Koko screams and summons every last ounce of strength in her body to keep the wind rushing through the propellers, to keep us airborne. We lift up about ten meters off the ground and glide about two hundred more sideways and out of the battlefield and land behind the squad of armored cars -- their ninety millimeter guns going to work on an insurgent machine gun nest in the hills.

It's over now. We're safe now. We've lost seven soldiers, and have seventeen more casualties. Not a good day. But we win. And for now, that's all that matters. Jia, Du Lin, and Hei Bai will take any victories they can get.

Chang however has run off to the closest radioman is getting some sort of call patched through while the litter bearers are running over to use to extricate the wounded. I can see Chang snatch the handset from the man and speak into it.

He comes over weak in the knees and says, “My family and children are safe”

“...what are you talking about?” Buno asks of him.

“The boy who we’ve slain,” he says, his knees buckling, “was my son’s best friend.”

All in a day's work.


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TEN
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	Eventually we drove them off. The other’s did, anyway. Jian One licked its wounds while the fighting simmered in the background, a constant staccato and drum-roll echoing off of the hills. We solemnly picked ourselves up, and dusted ourselves off, and tried to hold it all together. We had risked it all to save that gunner’s life, but all of us felt very low having now learned that the co pilot who Hei Bai had worked so hard to save had died. Gone back into shock before the air ambulance could even reach him. Hei Bai tried to look inscrutable, but in his own way he was weeping. To think, killed by his own fellow soldier.

    Chang wasn’t taking it as well. To see his own son’s best friend, a child, not only cut down but fighting against us as a terrorist. Was he coerced? Did they torture him to do it? Was he brainwashed into  fighting in a conflict far beyond his years of understanding? So this was the real tragedy of civil wars. Friends as enemies and brother against brother. Maybe this whole country seemed ready to come apart at the seams.

“I am sorry,” Buno said to Chang. “We will find the animals who are responsible and we will make them pay.”

    “You need not look very far.” Thein Kyu said. “Their will be a member of the Party somewhere in this village. He will be dressed as a citizen, and while he does not live in the village, he will be intimate with all the residents here and in the villages adjacent. I am sure of it. He will have been here to inspect the village’s loyalty and seeing it lacking will have coordinated the attack from inside.”

    Hei Bai’s ears perk up at this. He picks up his radio and whispers a command into it for the other officers in the area. The whole military is like a grotesque and primitive organism. It has its own organs, and behaviors. It has it’s own nervous system. A rustling is seen through select neurons in the beast as its officers all talk into their radio, and the demeanor of the animal as a whole changes as they begin issue orders or silent hand signals down to enlisted men. They begin rounding up families outside their huts and ranches and collecting them together, and begin to question them. Some shrug their shoulders, others point, and a single man that Buno has glued his eyes to begins to to walk rather briskly while avoiding eye contact.

    Buno gives a look to Hei Bai and Hei Bai returns it. This man passes not far from a pair of soldiers as he goes right for a nearby satomobile. Hei Bai clicks his radio and whispers into it. The soldiers cock their heads at attention to the order. Hei Bai lets an uncharacteristic cuss word fly over the open radio as the man pulls out a machine pistol and the two soldiers fall wounded to the ground.

    Before most of us could process what had happened, the sweaty man had hopped into an open top satomobile and begin racing off down the dirt road. With a toss of his arms, Peng heaved the dirt beneath the satomobiles wheels, but the driver regains control after swerving and careening around the road. Peng shrugs his shoulders

“Well,” he says, “it’s not like he can outrun a hummingbird gunship.”

“No!” Hei Bai responds, “they haven’t finished sweeping the road for mines. I want him back here alive and in one piece!”

Hei Bai points to me and Koko and then aggressively stabs his finger at the closest Satomobile.

    “On it, sir!” I shout as we both take of running, vaulting over the rear bumper in a single bound and crashing into the front seats. Koko flips the engine on, revs it while she pops it into first, then second, then first gear again and we’re off like a rocket. It doesn’t even take us sixty seconds to catch up to him, not that he was hard to find with all the dust he was kicking up behind him. About a klick and a half from the village by; the idiot doesn’t even notice us until we’re five meters from the his bumper.

    Right as we’re coming up next to pulls out that little pistol again. Koko slams on the brakes as he opens fire. I don’t even hear the reports, I’m so preoccupied with the windshield next to my face turning opaque from bullet holes. Koko falls back a little, mostly because she’s kicking the windscreen out with her foot. She doesn’t need it. Air bender, after all.

“You’ll have to get us closer!” I shout. “Right behind him.”

It may be the stupidest thing I’ve done yet, but I climb up onto the hood of the vehicle…

She has no problem catching up to him. We’re bumper to bumper. Crouching down like an animal I prepare to jump. I swallow. “Hold it steady!”

“I know!” she shouts back.

I jump.

Nope. I’m about to be roadkill.

Koko kicks her foot back over the dash and a blast of wind  hits me right in my rear, throwing me up into the Satomobile. I land in the passenger seat with a ‘poof!’ The Party member looks at me. I lock eyes with him. I smile, “hello.” I didn’t quite expect the knife.

    He whips it out fast, slashing down into my chest and collar bone. I grab his hand wielding the knife. With that touch I electrocute him and then slam his face into the steering wheel. There’s a satisfying toot from the horn. As I pull the parking brake and the satomobile crawls to a halt and stalls, Koko and I give each other the thumbs up.

    By the time the Party member starts to come around, my laceration to the chest has finally stopped bleeding -- though to be fair, Hei Bai has done a good job at the bandaging and gluing me back together. Eye’s wide, they dart around the scene before he tries to bolt from where he sits only for one of the dozen soldiers to smack him back to the ground with a whimper.

“Hello, Mr Party member,” says Buno. “Why don’t you tell me about what’s you’re doing here?”

“I am Xemin. I am official member of the Party. I am here on Party business.”

“So why do you carry a gun and shoot at my soldiers, Xemin?”

“I.. I am only protecting myself,” he stuttered. “You were going to arrest on false pretense!”

“I don’t think they’re false, Xemin. I think you were helping these terrorists. In fact, I think you were ordering them.”

“Lies!”

    “In fact, several of the prisoners confessed your name before they knew we suspected you. Do you see that man,” Buno pointed at Chang. “His son’s -- Ping Bei Lu’s -- best friend died here today, fighting for these terrorists. And I’m sure he participated in mob violence with the other troublemakers, too. Why don’t you tell me why he would do such a thing for your Party?”

    Something stirred in Xemin, “The Party would make a child fight? There is no such implication whatsoever! Everything I have done was in accordance with the Party, in accordance with your elections, and in accordance with basic law. I have rights, after all! I could have just sat here in silence as is my right but instead I am trying to help you and answer your questions.

    I am actually anxious for you all! Really, it’s true! You guys are good at one thing. All over this country, where ever you go, you do not run as fast as these terrorists, or they would never get away with this! They have a saying in the mainland Earth Kingdom’s People’s Democratic Republic, ‘say nothing, and you’ll make a fortune.’ But still I am trying to help you! The questions you ask… so naive! I can tell you -- not as the Party, but as an elder -- that I have seen too much of this. If I had said nothing perhaps it would have been the best. But I thought I’ve seen all of you so enthusiastic to win this war, and now I am trying to answer questions and cooperate even against my own interest!”

“Mr. Xemin…”

    “But if I said nothing, that wouldn’t be good either! You are so desperate to find excuse for failure of both this war and of your politician’s service that you would find me and the Party to be a scapegoat should I not answer your absurd questions. And of course those animals would find the village outsider as an easy scapegoat too, instead of turning over their real masters. Naive! You really think I could orchestrate this village attack? You really think I am responsible for trouble makers? You really think I am responsible for beating up Bei Li’s son? Ha! Do--

“Mr. Xemin, perhaps you should have said nothing after all? How did you know that Chang Bei Lu’s son was beaten by trouble makers.”

Then the Party-man went white as a bed sheet. The words he tried to form came bubbling and gurgling out as he searched for excuses. But ignoring this all Hei Bai picked up his FN FAL, loaded it, charged the handle, and handed it to a distant and weak-kneed Chang.

“No please! You cannot do this! I am a member of the Party! I…”

    The first shot tore a hole through the man’s stomach. The screams were almost as loud as the report. But then then next shot to the gut came a few seconds later. And the next one after that. And then again. And until the entire magazine was slowly emptied. But Chang never looked to see the bloody gore he created, though his hands were shaking. He kept looking off to the mountains.

When we returned to the fob we were given liberty for the next thirty six hours as rehab for the events of this morning. No one really wanted to talk about it; the fight, the casualties, what Chang did, what Chang had to do, the Party...

The Party…

    The Party was inescapable. The Party was everywhere. The Party was more than just the Earth Kingdom and it only just dawned on me how insurmountable their struggle would be going forward. There is no winning against the Party. But I didn’t have to win. I only had to survive long enough to walk away from the table. Time to go all in -- I went straight back to Hei Bai’s tent once we were dismissed.

"I'm leaving." I said.

"Why?" Hei Bai didn't look up from his paperwork.

"There's no way I'm sticking around for this. Not after seeing the Party"

He shrugged, "I convinced Koko to stay, and maybe I can convince you."

"I don't think you can. Money's not good enough. Simply doubling my pay isn't going to get me to stay on this rock." That was a bit excessive, but now I could begin haggling.

"I didn't just double Koko's pay if that's what you think. But, OK, name your price."

Time to really go in, and really hope he doesn’t call my bluff, "Triple it."

"OK. Done."

What? "Maybe my price doubled again."

    "OK. Then I'll double it. Triple it. Quadruple it. Tell you what, Hou Yi. I think your offer is weak so here's mine. I'm going to offer a lifetime supply of free money. Free housing. Free food. Anything you want is yours, no questions asked. You can live the rest of your entire life here, all on the work of my fat dirty yuan."

"…I"

"what? You're in it for the money right? Got more money than you could ever spend. Budget is meaningless to me, I have a blank check from Du Lin herself. Take all you can, give nothing back. That's all you care about right?"

"I don't understand… are you that desperate, or are you trying to mock me."

"What I'm trying to do is offer you a home. And I'll tell you the truth. I am very desperate. I am desperate because of what I am fighting for. What we're all fighting for. It matters, Hiro, even if you don't care."

He produced a blue slip of paper, scratched a line thru the numbers, wrote a new one, and then signed and initialed.

"Speaking of which. Take this. It's your check for the week. Quadruple is OK for now, until I can rewrite your contract, yes? Good.  Can you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Take my jeep. Give Chang a ride to Capital City so he can cash his check, and then take him home so he can see his family."

    I took Hei Bai’s key’s and found both his Satomobile and Chang shortly after. I tried to make small talk on the way to Capital City but Chang didn't say much. He doesn't say much of anything. Just as well. When he does you can smell the chewing tobacco on his breath. We pulled up to the Capital City bank.

The two of us wait in line for half an hour, only for the teller to say “I can’t cash these government issue checks here. You’ll have to go to a government treasury office.”

"No we don't," I said. "This is a government bank. Our checks here are as good as anywhere else.'

"Well OK then, sir. We're going to need to see some IDs."

Chang and I fish into our pockets and present them.

"Oh I'm sorry. These IDs are not good."

"Why?"

"because there's no voter ID card. Without it there's no way for me to verify that you really are a citizen of Jia."

"Well neither of us can get voter registration. We're not water tribe."

"Then how do we really know that you two are Hiro Yusha and Chang Bei Lu?"

I open up my uniform, showing my Jian issued dog tags and the new patch stitched onto my uniform.

“I serve in the military. These are military issue dog tags and patches.”

"No. you could have stolen it. It could be more forgery. Please come back later when you have proper documentation."

"Ok… OK…" I said. I ripped open my shirt, revealing the bandages and stitches underneath.

"I got shot and stabbed today. Wanna take a closer looksee?"

I ripped the bandage from my chest, and gritted my teeth and winched as the stitches came out with it. Blood starts dripping over the teller's desk.

"As you can see, this one's not actually too bad. Just a grazing slash from a knife wound. But I’m lucky… if he had thrusted I probably wouldn’t be alive.

“Hiro!” Chang shouts, “What are you doing? Stop this.”

"Security! Security!"

Blood's still dripping over the desk.

A dozen soldiers rush in from somewhere and come to us. Chang stands off to the side and sighs. He puts his hands up and doesn't say a word. Just keeps looking out into space.

"ma’am? What's the problem"

"Remove these two right now!"

Half of these soldiers are non-Water tribe. Natives. They look at the military patches on our shoulders and they hesitate

"Oh," I continue. "Are these forgeries too? Do you think I did this to myself?"

Splat, splat, splat. The blood drips to the floor, it runs down my shirt.

"Hiro…" Chang says, "Everyone's staring."

"Let them. Let them ask why this teller won't cash our check's we've earned by bleeding for their country."

    The dozen soldiers sent to arrest us move to stand beside us, shoulder to shoulder. They don't say a word. Maybe they know the experience all too well. They stare down the teller with burning eyes. Trembling, she takes the checks, wiping the blood off one of them, and opens her register. He takes out the money and hands it to us.

"Get out, dirt bender."

Moron doesn't even know neither of us are Earth Benders. But I guess all yellow-skins look the same to him.

As I walk out of the bank I'm not quite sure I even did what I just did. The dozen soldiers walk out with me and salute me. A tribal cop on the street sees us and salutes us. I tell the Chang to get in the car and drive. He drives away as fast as he can.

"Don't worry. I won't waste any more of your time by stopping at a hospital or something. Just don't go off-roading or anything while I do this."

He nods. I reach into the back seat of the car and grab one of Hei Bai's trauma kits. I pull out a thread and needle and being stitching back up the gash on my breast. I sanitize it and put a bandage on top. I cover up my wound and ripped shirt with my jacket.

We drive for another hour. After forty minutes of silence, Chang says to me, "I know you're mad. Please let it go, Hiro. It's not worth it."

We're driving straight into the sun but it doesn't blind us. It's warm and setting and red like the blood stained to my shirt and it looks like the whole sky is on fire. Don't ask me if there's any meaning in that, I don't know.

    Another half hour goes by and we roll up to one of the farmstead villages. Indistinguishable from the one we fought at earlier. A mix of mud and thatch huts and new modern homes. As Peng got out of the car he motioned for me to come out, too. The cicadas are busy singing in their trees, screaming Kree! Kree!

    In the dirt three boys were playing.  A beautiful native woman stood by one of the houses, holding the hand of a little girl, watching them. One of the boys was water tribe, by the darkness of his skin. All three of them ran around together with pots and colanders on their heads, holding sticks in their hands.

They stopped and looked at us as we approached. They took off their pretend helmets and started running toward us.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

"My boys!" Chang breaks into a smile and runs toward them. He scoops them both up, one in each arm and starts spinning around and around. They're giggling.

"whoo hoo," he sets them down and gives both of them big sloppy kisses on their heads. "daddy's a little dizzy now. You wanna see the airplane?"

"yeah! Yeah!"

Chang holds his arms out to his sides like wings and begins running around. His sons follow him running, making their impression of an airplane.

"Wanna see what a jet plane looks like?"

"what's a jet, daddy?"

"Come-on, I'll show ya!"

He holds his arms swept backwards now, and begins making sharp twists as he runs and makes a zooming whooshing noise.

As I'm standing there the water tribe boy runs up to me. He's wearing a pot on his head like a helmet, carrying a stick for a rifle, and he's got some rope wrapped around himself like a bandoleer

"Are you a soldier too?"

"well… yeah!"

"Private Tam reporting for duty sir!"

I awkwardly returned the salute.

"Thank you soldier! Are you a hero like Ping and Pong's dad?"

    Before I could think of anything to say, one of the boy’s locks eyes with me. He tries to smile, But behind it i can see into his eyes as they pierce through me. They’re eyes I’ve seen before. Burning eyes. Soldier’s eyes. Same as the soldiers in the Capital City bank. The eye’s of someone who’s lost their innocence.

“Come along, Ping,” Says Chang, the boy turning away from me. “Supper is ready.”

I don't try to stick around much after that. The whole experience leaves me feeling… uncomfortable, for some reason. But as I was walking to my car, I saw another Satomobile drive up to edge of property. Out hops… Buno and Thein Kyu?

“Just in time!” Buno says. “Hiro, I will need you to come to the Capital with me. But first, I will need to speak with Chang.”

Chang waves his children off to his wife and goes to speak with Thein Kyu and Buno. Sitting in Hei Bai’s stamobile parked nearby, I can hear fragments of their conversation as they stand near Buno’s jeep. It’s not much, but it’s enough to know what’s going on…

“No,” says Chang, “He doesn’t know yet.”

“Do you plan to tell him?”

“Eventually. But how could I ever tell him that it was at my hands? I think he’s beginning to suspect that his friend is already dead. After all, they haven’t seen him in months now, not since the mob.”

“And that’s the other thing we need to discuss. This situation is putting me in a difficult situation as well…”

“Buno, please.” Says Thein Kyu, “He’s been through enough today already.”

    “I understand,” says Buno, “but it’s put me in a difficult position. I don’t want this either. But at the end of day, your son participated in that mob, if only briefly. He beat people, too. Du Lin’s stance is very clear, we punish criminals no matter what, to send a message to would be troublemakers. I’m not sure how much longer I can protect him from the police.”

    Chang looks at the ground, and tears begin to flow down his cheeks. “The harvest has been bad this season. Not enough rain. They say it is because the spirits are upset, that the bloodshed has angered them and that they will be unhappy until wrongs have been righted. I cannot stop justice. But my greatest regret is that now Ping never be a doctor, or anything more than a farmer. They will never let a criminal work outside tribal lands”

“Have them drop the charges, Buno.” Thein Kyu responds. “The evidence is circumstantial, even if it is true. We’ll get Du Lin to drop the charges.”

Chang interjects, “Du Lin is hard to convince. She would never put herself in such a position to be seen as playing favorites or abusing her power.”

“Then an exchange. Leniency for the boy, but I will stand trial.”

“Thein Kyu…”

    “No, Buno. I have done what I have done. But your boy risked everything to do the right thing, without lying or deceit. Hei Bai has already agreed to help me. Du Lin may want to send a message of justice to would be troublemakers. But if we do not show leniency here then we will lose their hearts and minds because we will deny them hope.”

They talked at little more, until Thein Kyu and Chang embraced each other and Buno approached me saying, “Follow me and Thein Kyu to the Capital. Du Lin wants you present for an emergency meeting. Then we’ll reset the clock on your liberty.”

    The sun had set by now and the twilight turned to darkness. The drive back by myself was long and arduous and I would have been lost had Buno not been leading the way. My thoughts started to get the better of me. Enough to leave this doomed and forsaken country. Why stay? Why die here? Only the international radio kept me company, the latest teenybopper music being looped over the airways in an attempt to silence my head:

On a winter’s day/

I’d be safe and warm/

If I was in Roku's Bay/

Fire Nation dreamin’...


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ELEVEN
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 	Through the velde, through the Kopjes and brush, the sun punished all, native and Water Tribe alike. Thein Kyu and I sat beside one another on a rock in the one little crater deep enough to lay down in. Sort of back to back, sort of side to side, passing a canteen of water back and forth. The mountains to the east were behind us and if you squinted you could just make out the beginning of the Si Wong desert. No camo or netting to shade us as we were far from the Jian border now and would not leave a trace of our presence.

Sitting across from each other on a pair of stumps sat Koko and Peng. The two of them took turns throwing a knife as close as they could to other’s feet in a game called mumbly-peg. This was important, you see -- money was on the line.

“You guys really shouldn’t do that,” Said Chang, “It’s dangerous.”

“Shut up, dad!” They retorted in unison. Peng pulled the knife from the dirt and threw it with a cock of his wrist and elbow, embedding itself in the loam less than a centimeter from Koko’s toe. She didn’t bat an eye.

“It’s sort of comforting to think that even on the other side of the mountains there’s still just as much drought as back on the homesteads,” Thein Kyu says.

Chang said, “My people pray to a spirit of the rain, Shangyang. A great bird, whose wings beat so strongly that they churn the skies and collect rainstorms. Alas, the rain goddess has not answered our prayers.”

    “I know of Shangyang,” said Thein Kyu, “she is a servant of Yu Shi, but he has not answered the prayers for rain either. There are other great birds revered in my village, the Jian. They say it is a pair of birds, -- mirroring each other but not opposites -- each with one leg, one wing, and one eye. They are black and white, Yin and Yan, Hei and Bai, husband and wife. They fly together as one, or they will both falter and die.”

Just then I heard a noise in the brush and tapped Thein Kyu on the shoulder. We both grabbed our guns and stood up, looking over the crater. Thein Kyu sees them first and says, “stand down, it’s Buno and Hei Bai”

    Coming in at a full gallop, Hei Bai rides his dragon-horse right to the edge of the crater. The creature rears up as Hei Bai pulls the reins, and the distraction slips the knife from Koko’s finger’s a moment too early. The blade embeds itself in the wooden stump, between Peng’s legs and mere millimeters from his groin. Startled, he falls backward from the stump

“Hey! you flinched,” Koko exclaims, “Pay up, mother f--”

“Enough!” shouted Buno. “I’ll have none of this criminal degeneracy in my unit!”

“I’ll put another ten Yuan on Koko,” Hei Bai says as he pulled at the reins of dragon-horse’s snapping head. “Buttercup is a really good boy unless he catches scent of a jackalope within twenty klicks. Anyway, The car’s in the village. Like the spooks said it’d be.”

Buno said, “We’ll leave the dragon-horses here. Take everything else. This operation is all riding on you, Peng. No matter what happens -- no matter what happens -- don’t blow your cover.

    We had thought earlier that the Satomobile bombs were being armed in the cities. We now knew these bombs that had been wreaking havoc through the cities were being built in locations outside the border and driven in.  The town we were outside of was one of them. Huts, a generator or two, and only a thousand souls lived here. But there was a lance like ours sitting on the outskirts of every one of these towns for the last month, all with the same plan in place.

    Peng drew the short straw. He was Earth Kingdom racially, and as a former combat engineer he was the only one of us qualified in explosives. We couldn’t stop all the car bombs, but we wouldn’t have to. We were going to catch some that we could. Some were tampered with to be duds. Others would detonate at random. Peng was going to slip into the garage and put a timed fuse into the bomb. In ideal circumstances we'd wait for the cover of night. But if we missed our shot there'd be another dozen dead women and children in the Capital the next day.

    So now we waited on the periphery, all in silence, and Peng journeys alone into the forest of stucco. For thirty agonizing minutes, I bite my lower lower lip till it bleeds. Thirty minutes later I breathe a sigh of relief. Then a gasp of terror. As we see him make it to the edge of the village and hop the split rail fence of an animal pen, troublemakers brandishing QBZ rifles appear behind him.

“Don’t. Move.” Hei Bai says.

“They’ll kill him,” says Chang.

“I said, don’t move. Peng has faith, he hasn’t broken his cover yet, neither will we.”

The troublemakers shove Peng to his knees, and strike him with the but of their rifles.  Still, he only puts up the meekest of protests.

“We’ll save him,” says Hei Bai, “but we’ll need all the help from Thein Kyu I can get.”

Thein Kyu smiles and nods, already guessing the con that I do not…

    After a couple minutes of Thein Kyu explaining our roles to us, Buno and Hei Bai slink off to their dragon-horses. The rest of us stroll across the brush to Peng. Koko leads the way and I follow, the two of us having laid down our weapons and given them to Buno. Chang and Thein Kyu trail to either side.

“Hey! Hey! Hey! What is going on here?” Koko bellows.

“Who goes there?” the two insurgents shout, pointing there rifles at us.

“Fools!” shouts Thein Kyu. “Is that how you dare address a superior officer or a commissar of the Party?”

Koko airbends a gust of dust into one of the two insurgents faces. They both lie prostrate and kowtow to us. “We are very sorry, ma’am. A thousand apologies. Please, forgive us.”

    “This man before you is a spy.” says Koko. “But he is not here to observe us. He came here to attempt to leave with a message, because someone in this village is not loyal to the cause and is telling secrets to this man. Bring out every one of your comrades in the village, including your Party member.”

“Now,” I said, “I will show you what we do to spies.”

    I approached Peng and smiled. I mouthed ‘sorry,’ but part of me wasn’t. I made sure to pull my punches and kicks. Well, most of them. Had to sell it, after all. A few minutes later, after I had broken a sweat and had gotten tired of beating Peng, there was a crowd of fifteen or so of the troublemakers lined up outside.

“The Party member looked at Koko and asked, “what is an officer doing here? We weren’t expecting any support from the Sovereignty?”

I point to Chang, and he kills the man where he stands.

    “I am a commissar of the Party, and I will punish all who betray it or fail it,” I said. “Some people have been disloyal, and clearly he has failed the Party in inspiring obedience. Whoever is disloyal to the party, and was giving secrets to this spy, I will find them.”

“Everyone, pushups, now!” shouts Thein Kyu, “The first to collapse must not really want to give his all to the cause.”

    I have never before seen such terror in the faces of men. Their arms were shaking before even the first exercise but none of them could stop. While Koko, Thein Kyu, and I inspected the men in front of us, Chang pulled Peng up from the ground and walked him at gunpoint around to the back of a building. There is a single crack of a gunshot.

“I didn’t say stop doing push-ups!” shouts Thein Kyu.

As we inspect the men, he gives me gestures to specific individuals. I point for them to get up and Thein Kyu escorts them to the back of the building. More gunshots.

A minute or two later Thein Kyu and Chang pull up in large covered supply truck.

“We’ll be taking this from you,” said Koko. “you had better continue the mission as planned, or else there will be further consequences.”

Koko and I opened up the flaps and hopped inside the rear of the flat as Chang began to drive off. Tied and gagged were a half dozen troublemakers, with Peng holding them at gunpoint.

    All in another day's work. Hei Bai and Buno or whoever else would have to go through them one at a time. Thein Kyu had picked some that he knew were the bad eggs, but the most were ones he knew had wavering loyalties (if they ever really had any loyalty to the Party to begin with) and would give information freely, if not also turn coat like Thein Kyu and so many others had already. This was how we might just win this war. I peaked my head out the flaps and saw Buno and Hei Bai galloping behind our truck. Hei Bai shrugged his shoulders at me while he rode side saddle on his dragon-horse. I nodded and gave him both thumbs up.

“You can almost see it from here,” said Chang, pulling his scarf tighter around his face, “Si Wong rock.”

Thinking about it made me shudder as well.

    Two weeks drifted by since that operation. The fuse Peng planted set the car bomb off later that day, killing three of the troublemakers. It was only one of two dozen bombs in the last month that had been either blown up prematurely or failed to detonate at all. And very shortly after the start of this operation something amazing happened. The number of car bombings began to slow down. And now, for the last week, they had stopped in entirety. Peace had finally returned to the capital, as it was starting to return in the homesteads as well.

Maybe, just maybe, this is what winning looks like.

A colonel and his orderly ran around the camp handing out some sort of pieces of paper to all the soldiers on the base. I thought back to the start of the operation. To my conversation with Du Lin. The same night I had returned with Thein Kyu and Buno from Chang’s farm.

    I had thought it odd that I of all people was summoned to be present at these deliberation. Regardless of my past accomplishments, I was at the end of the day still a trigger puller. In so many words I had asked about this in the middle of a conversation we were having. Du Lin said, “I need an outside observer. I need point of contradiction and dissent.”

Buno snickered trying to hold back is laughter. “As if you don’t already have that.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t you and Hei Bai both Jian Water Tribe?”

"You see," Said Hei Bai, "Du-Lin believes in that legalistic society and harmony nonsense"

"And Hei Bai is a dirty hippy!" Du Lin blurted out. She cleared her throat and recomposed herself. "While Hei Bai and I may have our… differences, we are in agreement on most of the issues facing this nation. We cannot afford an echo chamber”

    In the end, it didn't matter how much they believed the same, or differed in beliefs. There was Buno's tribal mysticism. That was unique among the 'old breed' of the Water Tribe; it cared only for itself. Then there was Hei Bai's Tao and Du Lin's legalism. These two beliefs had a feud with each other since the day of their inception. But none of that mattered because as far as the civilized world was concerned, they were all dead relics of the past. All were banned from existence within the Earth Kingdom under the label of the Four Olds

    With the advance of modern technology, the world needed New Customs, New Culture, New Habits, and New Ideas. To make room for a new age of Progress, these old things just had to go. Among them were the spirits that inhabited this world. There has been more change in seventy years before and after the last harmonic convergence than in the whole ten thousand years before. And with the change brought by the invention of guns, humans were now stronger than the Spirits. In the past they flooded from the spirit world into ours, but now we drove them back. Where we once survived by the mercy of the lion turtles, they now survived by our mercy. The portals could never be completely closed, but were sealed and guarded.

I mention this because only a few generations ago Korra opened the portals to unite the spirits and the humans. Korra's message to both worlds was simple:

Respect each other

Work together

Live in peace

Treat each other with fairness and equality.

I guess the world wasn't ready for that, even after ten thousand years. And one hundred and nineteen years later, it seems we're still not ready.

"What if they're right about the vote?" I said.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "How could they be?"

	"Think about how they feel. Think about how I feel. They're contributing just as much and they love this country just as much but they're still treated as second class citizens. They serve this country in greater numbers than the Water Tribe, and die to defend it. It’s no wonder the opposition so easily exploits them"

    "What is so hard about this for you people to understand? Before the water tribe showed up this place was a dessert with a few scattered tribesmen. I remember when we were under Fire Nation rule and the biofilms and corrosion choked out the desalination plants. I remember when water benders would line up sometimes in the thousands and pump that fresh water from the bay to the farmsteads by hand, Hiro. We tilled the soil. We started the country. They came here. That was their choice to make."

    "Just like you chose to come here? They flocked here for the exact same reasons that you did, to get away from the Earth Kingdom and the Party. And I might remind you that this land isn't even yours, either. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be fighting this war right now. Don't forget that you built this country by standing on the backs of your natives laborers. and Fire Nation taxpayers. You're acting no better than your oppressors."

"So what if we do? That's survival. That's good statecraft. The human race is all about relationships, Hiro. And part of that system means that there are those who govern, and those who are governed. You speak like a naïve idealist."

"And you speak exactly like a politician." She bit her lower lip.

    And then Thein Kyu interrupted, “Hiro you must understand that things here are not so simple. There was a time not to long ago when a different people than my own had lived here, and we, too, stole this land from them. This clay has passed through many people’s hands many times. Now, I am sorry but there is something that Buno and I would like to discuss with Du Lin alone.”

It had been one month since that fateful meeting. Du Lin started our operation to sabotage the and stop the bombers the next day. Now I was staring at a piece of paper in my hand. A ballot.

“Colonel, sir, what is the meaning of this?”

    “Du Lin has called an early presidential election. By authority of her decree, she has mandated an end to educational requirements. All Jian citizens by birth, and all serving in the military, have been enfranchised. We vote tonight, because the whole military is being mobilised tomorrow for the protection of the population. Voting stations in the cities and buses to collect votes for the natives. Consider this your heads up.” So this was finally it.

    The vote.

I waited till he walked away and incinerated the piece of paper in the palm of my hand. What should I care, this wasn’t my country. I felt a chill of cold run down the back of my neck. I stared up to the sky, and then came another on my cheek.

    Rain.

First real rain since the start of this conflict, since the start of the drought. That night I fell into a heavy sleep.

    The next morning -- the most momentous days in Jian history since unilateral declaration of independence -- looked like any other. I’m sorry to you, my reader. I really am. I wish I could speak of the turmoil in the cities and the jubilation and parties and celebrations. But for most of us soldiers, it was another day on patrol outside a village.

    It had to be this way. Not a single terrorist had dared to attack the farms or villages.  There was no car bomb that could be prepared fast enough given this out of the blue call to election. Every private company was shut down for the day with their losses subsidized. And every single reservist was mobilized to patrol and form perimeters.

As we watched the procession come from the capital to hand out ballots under the inspection of both Du Lin’s government and the Party’s representatives, I saw Chang begin to cry.

“I thought this day would never come” He said as both tears and raindrops ran down his cheeks. “That our voices would finally be recognized.”

    I think that to Thein Kyu this day was a lot more hollow. Like myself he had also destroyed his ballot. As for the others, I did not ask what they voted for, or if they voted at all. Again, as significant as this day was, it might have been any other to me if it weren’t for the rain.

We watched over our post. And then we went home. And then the next day came the news. Du Lin had won in a landslide.

    When we returned home to the FOB there was a celebration throughout the camp, not seen since the unilateral declaration of independence. Baijiu and traditional beer had been pulled out of hiding by the natives and the officers did not even pretend to look the other way.

Party lights and floating paper lanterns had all made a return, even if they were against usual operational security. “Hip Hip Hoorah! Forward together!” continued to be chanted through the camp. Not even the rain could put a damper on our jubilee

    We shuffled wearily to congregation in the middle of the encampment and sat down at a table where we greeted with celebratory dishes. Chicken-possums feet. Gao Choi, BBQ. Boiled sea prunes (disgusting waterbender tripe). Fresh Kimchi courtesy of the local farmsteads. And of course noodles. I didn’t even mind the rain, it felt cool on my skin, in fact.

“This is so good I could cry!” Hei Bai exclaimed between spitting out the bones of the chicken foot in his mouth.

“Ifthindskfsotooitisssrwaawywargharble,” Koko said, stuffing an endless torrent of noodles down her gullet. Her stomach was a bottomless pit, surpassing even Buno.

Right on cue, Chang pulled the flask from inside his flak vest resulting in a scowl from Buno.

“Go easy on the hooch,” said Hei Bai. “We still gotta patrol just as hard for the next few weeks in case of retaliatory attacks.” His breath reeked of the sea prunes.

“Hey relax,” said Koko after belching. “We’ve earned this.”

    And then there was a wave of gasps and commotion that spread from some point within the camp. Some officers were throwing hand signals across the camp to each other. Other’s could be seen leaning over to whisper into one another’s ears. Hei Bai stood up to survey what was happening. And then syllable by syllable we all started to har in bits and pieces what had just happened.

A chill of fear I first mistook for a raindrop ran down my spine. Today was supposed to be a day of victory. But everything changed when the Air Sovereignty attacked.

Without warning, their Airforce advanced group had begun bombing the east of the peninsula. Tian Five airdock was destroyed. The rest of their air force was mobilizing for complete air superiority within the next twenty four hours.

“Grab everything you have,” said Hei Bai, “Pack your bags. And get set for your next mission. You all have fifteen minutes to meet me at the motor pool. We’re driving to the east of the Capital. We’re going to war.”


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TWELVE
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	Tensions ran high the next day. Naturally all of us were scared. But no one hiding like rats with me in this ditch could take all of the enormity at once. War. Real War. Not with trouble makers but with a super power. Was this really happening? Weren’t we already at war? The officers were nervous. Koko, Peng, and I started to feel relaxed. We’d trained to fight a real war for our whole adult lives but had the indignity of shooting at children at peasants.

	But our enemy was more faceless than we had hoped. They would be content to bombard us with near impunity from the air. Once their attack aircraft finished bombing tactical targets, the gunships would sweep across the land, like stepping on an anthill -- unless we could put a stop to it.

	"The mission will begin at zero hours tonight. Squads two and three will be laying low and hitting the enemy from the rear after they deploy troops. You'll keep your ears open for orders, and be ready to move from your fighting holes at a moment's notice. My squad is the sexy mission squad. We're gonna be taking this fight to the enemy."

Hei Bai stopped to squirt a glob of sunscreen onto his fingers and rub it into his nose. He then drew his knife and began to scratch his plans in the soil.

	"Other than the bombings and the probing infantry attacks, the real air bender offense comes from the airships; the Sovereignty refers to all of their own airships as Appas, and all of their friendly fighters as Momos. They have four types of these air ships: Sanzuwu class bombers, Yanwu class gunships, Jinwu class flying aircraft carriers, and transports. The biggest threat is the gunships and the aircraft carrier escorts. The infantry scout a region. They pick soft targets, and the transports drop hundreds of paratroopers. Once the troops have encircled and defended an area, the gunships sweep across that area like scythes. I plan to board that sky-bison, and turn their own guns against them."

The silence was deafening. Everyone who wasn't one of Hei Bai's heroes was holding their breath. Chang, Koko, and Buno didn't look phased in the slightest.

Someone broke the silence, "how are you gonna do that? Who is going to do that? That's a suicide mission. To pull something like that off, you'd have to be…"

Right on que, Peng strolled into the circle, bent a rock out of the earth, and sat on it.

"…the Oni of Si Wong," some else finished.

Peng licked his lips.

	Hei Bai unwrapped a candy bar and began to take bites of it. He continued, "Koko and Peng will be the ones assaulting the gunship, the rest of you are just support. You can call this mission whatever you want. But this mission is happening and you will follow my orders no matter how suicidal you think they are. I don't care what you think of them. It's about time that the Air Nation takes us seriously. Furthermore, PFFFFFFFTT! Pft! Pft! P'!"

"you OK, sir?"

"ah, gross, I got sunscreen in my mouth."

One of the younger soldiers asked. “What is the Oni of Si Wong?”

Everyone turned to stare at him. after an awkward pause, Koko finally answered, "he's a ghost story. A fairy tale. An invisible, unstoppable spec-ops agent of death? It's a story for scaring over-privileged children."

"But why does everyone talk about him? Where did it come from?"

	"Here's the story I heard a few years ago," another said. "It was during the sand-bender insurrection. There was a special forces group. Something you wouldn't want to dance with, demon or not, you know what I mean? But on their way out on a mission, things don't go so well. The story always changes but the end is that they all get killed. All of 'em but one. And this guy just goes… nuts! Like just sick with rage. But I think he was just scared, you know. Afraid. But what he does next is the really scary part. He just up and kills all of 'em. The story always gets taller and taller, but at its lowest count that I remember, he goes and kills over a hundred of these insurgents, a good order of them with his bare hands, even.''

"or she," Koko chimed.

"Yeah, or she."

"Sounds like a load of crap to me," says Peng.

"I thought you were gloating about it; not actually a bad reputation to have in the scheme of things, I guess,'' I said to Peng.

"Guess he hasn't told ya. You're the Oni tonight, Hiro."

"What do you mean?"

"You and Koko are taking the airship. They just think that I'm the one going up there. After all, it is a legend right? Doesn't really matter who the Oni is or not. But let's keep this a little spec-ops secret, OK, private?"

"Y-Yes, sir."

	We sat in that hole for hours, trying to ignore the heat and the distant sounds of gunfire. Dusk came. Then night. Koko and I got up from the dirt, leaving a puddle of sweat behind us. Stepping out from the camouflage netting, Hei Bai was waiting for us with our equipment. Chiefly, a tandem parachute.

“Can you see that, right above us?” asked Hei Bai. I could not. “It’s almost right above us now. But they can’t see us either. This will be one for the history books. Good luck.”

Hei Bai handed the tandem parachute to Koko and we began to strap ourselves together.

"You know," Koko said as she tightened the parachute harness around her shoulders, "this whole thing could be a suicide mission. I don't trust that Hei Bai isn't just sending us up there to die."

"Because you're an air bender?"

"Yeah."

"maybe Hei Bai doesn't trust you. Why did you decide to stay and fight against the airbenders?"

	She paused long enough for me to take in the sounds of the warm summer night. The chirping of the cicadas. The distant rumble and of engines and cannon fire and the thunder. The twinkle of heat lightning and muzzle flash. A very pleasant night for the amount of dying that was about to unfold.

	"Because I love my people, but I don't love what my country has done to them. Did you know Tenzin wanted to dissolve the Air Sovereignty? He wanted us to be free, even from ourselves. Have you ever seen what life in the Air Nation is like? We're in shambles but our politicians like to distract everyone by roaming around and shooting at every outside problem we see. I want this madness to stop. And I hope that if I stop it here then maybe we can finally fix ourselves. At least that's the spiel of what Hei Bai told me to believe."

"do you believe him."

"I do," she said. "or at least I'm trying, really hard."

I remember once, on a night in a dessert foxhole like this, asking comrade and friend Korah about the Air Sovereignty. "hey Korah! Don't you Air Nomads have any normal folks like me? It’s always air benders, air benders, air benders!” Korah laughed.

	"You know," Korah said to me, "Back in the day, we all used to be pretty savage. A newborn child was inspected. And if he was discovered not to be a bender, he was cast aside and left to fate. It was cruel, but hey, we didn't have a real homeland for the majority of us to live… we had to stay strong and mobile. They did this long before Aang, too. We're nomads after all. What're ya gonna do?"

"And what about now?"

"Well of course we don't do that anymore, we're not savages. The gene tests the eggheads have these days, they can tell if a fetus is a going to be a bender or not, and take care of it right there. Painless. Hell, it took my parents two tries before they got it right with me."

I miss him. I miss all of them.

Koko stood up as I approached her. I pressed my back to her as she strapped me into the parachute.

"Now don't get any funny ideas, ya hear?"

"I'll try not to."

Koko took a long, deep breath as she prepared to airbend. She pulled the cord on the chute and whisked us up into the starry moonless sky. A pair of Jians take flight.

	We spiraled around on the warm summer air, riding the thermals up and down and up again, waiting for our target. We knew it was out there, somewhere. It was massive but nearly invisible, like a leviathan of the deep. I looked over the horizon to the north and I didn't see it. I didn't see anything; but most of all I didn't see the stars that were there a few seconds ago. That had to be our mark. I turned on my night vision.

	There it was! Only three hundred meters away and moving at us fast and oblivious, it had no idea we were here. I signaled to Koko and turned my night vision back off – blasted things give you motion sickness, the field of view is so narrow.
Koko sent us skyward with a blast of wind we swooped up toward the sides of the monster. We had to get close, but had to be even more careful of the propellers that lined the said of the craft. I readied my scattergun as we swept in toward the zeppelin and fired.  the grappling hook snaked a coil of rope behind it, arcing through the sky. That half second felt like an eternity. Bull's-eye! Perfect clip right onto the starboard nacelle. I began spooling in the cable so that it would snap taught.

"Hold on!" Koko shouted to me.

	The gust of wind caught me off guard as we were slammed into the side of the zeppelin. We rolled over top each other down the side of Kevlar canvas, our eight limbs flailing uselessly and wildy.

	"Grab something! Grab something!" one of us shouted. Our parachute had deflated and twisted and dangled as dead weight beneath us. I did everything I could to cling to the side of the zeppelin, but it just wasn't working. And that's just when our parachute decided to untangle itself. We were both violently ripped from the side of the airship, and stopped just as violently. I could barely hear Koko screaming over the sound of the wind rushing over us. I looked behind me at Koko and saw that our chute wasn't even three meters from being sucked into the starboard propeller. I look forward and I could see that the rope was caught and coiled around Koko's legs, nearly twenty meters of loose rope dangling between it and our harness. We had to get Koko's foot free but if that rope slipped off now…

That's it. Time to do something desperate. With a swish of my hand and a jet of flame I severed the parachute from our harness. We swung, upside down, like a pendulum on nearly thirty yards of cable.

"Koko! Are you OK?" my head was starting to go fuzzy from all the blood rushing to it.

"Does it look like I'm OK?"

	I tried to reach for the rope, but there was no way I'd ever be able to sit up and reach high enough above Koko's ankle to undo the coil with her weight on our back. Koko wasn't going to like what comes next but it couldn't be help. I reeled in all the cable I could with the electric winch on our harness. I pulled it taught, and then Koko groaned as it pulled our waists up to her heel, tightening the rope around her ankle from both ends. The pain must have been unbearable, but now I finally had enough purchase to reach above her ankle. I could grab the rope, but there still wasn't enough slack for me to undo the coil. I was out of options. Above me I could hear the guns of the air ship had just started firing on Jian soldiers and villages. So I did the only thing I could. I clutched the rope as tightly as I could with my right and with my left, I severed it beneath her ankle.

The two of us whipped violently back and forth as our bodies righted themselves. My arm felt like it was going to explode. I was grateful for having a ninety pound girl on my back instead of, Rhava forbid, Buno.

"Koko! Clip the end of the cable into the winch right now or we're toast!"

"I can't!" she said. "There's not enough slack!"


	Hand over hand, I pulled the two of us higher and higher up the rope. I stopped us when Koko had about half a meter to work with. She fumbled for a few seconds as she tried to feed the rope through the auto-gri-gri that should couldn't see. It probably didn't help that we were vibrating thanks to violent shaking in my arms. They felt like they were going to explode.

koko gasps, "I did it!"

I let go of the rope and my heart skipped a beat as the harness caught us. For the next five minutes, the two of us simply hung from the cable, saying nothing.

	After collecting myself, I flicked the switch on the winch and we whorled our way up to the cable to the Airship's nacelle. As we reached the top I noticed my grappling hook was only a centimeter or so from coming undone. It took me a minute, but I managed to slice through the exterior with a jet of flame. Mustering all the strength we had, Koko and I pulled ourselves inside, tumbling into the empty maintenance corridor. We rolled over, unclipped ourselves from each other, and slumped up against the aluminum pipes.

"Are you OK, Koko?"

"Check my leg"

I rolled up her pant-leg and applied pressure. She winced in pain. Lots of swelling.

"strained ankle, broken fibula. Can you complete the mission?"

"yeah, I'll be fine. Thanks for asking, jerk."

"We got a long night ahead of us yet."

	The two of us popped open the maintenance hatch that connected this corridor to the rest of the airship. Taking point, I rounded the corner into the fire control center; three air benders, each sitting in a chair at their stations. I relaxed: they couldn't see us or hear us. Tubes ran from the console to their mouths, supplying them with oxygen and water. Fiber optic cable ran from the console to their eyes, so they'd never have to be disturbed by turbulence when looking through their gun sights. Hoses ran from the console to their groins, so that they'd never have to leave their chairs. Wires ran from the console to their ears, so they'd only hear the radio communication from the rest of the crew. Completely closed off from the outside world, this is how the eggheads say all warriors will fight in the future. I wonder if this is the future of the rest of us, too.

	I draw my little snub-nosed revolver and attach the suppressor. It's got a cylinder that meshed together to make a seal when it fires, so no little casings go flying out and making noise, either. Pop! Pop! Pop! I shot each of them through the skull and pried them from their chairs. Koko and I then raced as fast as we could to the bridge. With a gust of air she blew down the door. I'm sure you understand how this little song and dance goes by now.

"Loaders are gonna start wondering why the guns aren't firing anymore," Koko said. "Get down there fast, I'll take over the bridge for now."

	Koko and I moved with purpose to the gun deck. All she had to do this time was simply knock on the door. It opened right up, and the air benders inside were met with a staccato of Koko's burp gun. As she limped back to the bridge, I topped off the rounds in the ammo hoppers and then made way to the fire control station and strapped myself in. I attached the fiber optic lenses to my eyes and my head throbbed as my vision was filled with radiant green snow. I adjusted the tracking and dialed in the resolution until a green and black image began to materialize. Was it the ground? Yeah I think so. I swiveled the gun around and checked the loading: forty millimeter, high explosive incendiary. Not bad.

"Look east," Koko said over the radio. "I'm bringing a pair of zeppelins to you. Hold your fire till I give the order."

I felt the zeppelin I was in begin to lurch and turn on its new course.

"Come in Durga one. Why have you broken formation? Is something wrong?"

"Go for the aircraft carrier first, so it can't sortie," Koko said. "then we go for the bomber."

I aimed my cannon at the airship and zoomed in. at one kilometer away, it was like the eraser on the tip of a pencil held at arm's length; close range for the kind of weaponry we were using.

"Now!"

The tracers arced through the sky like the streaming tails of a kite. Even through the blurry monochromatic optics I could see the other airship erupt in flames, lurching around in confusion before nose diving into the ground.

	The radio channel exploded next. Screams and panic and interrogatives. The bomber began to break formation before I opened fire, but a lucky round found its way to the bombers magazine. For a moment, my optics stop working, completely whited out from the conflagration. Several seconds later our gunship rolls back and forth from the shockwave. There’s nothing left but atoms.

"We're ground pounding now." Koko's voice cracks over the radio. "got 'bout twenty minutes till aircraft show up and swat us."

	I can see and feel Koko changing the zeppelin's course again. We're gliding over farmland in the dead of night. Over two kilometers away I can see flashes of guns like fireflies. One kilo closer I can see houses as clear as day. I wonder if they can see me. I wonder if they can even hear me. I check to make sure it's the enemy and not friendlies, but you can never be one hundred percent sure. I cross my fingers and pull the trigger. There's a pause and the rounds seem to hang in the air. And then those fireflies are drowned in a miniature sun. the blast splashes like water as droplets of incendiary jelly splatter all around. For the next half a minute, the airbenders don't dare shoot at the other side of the fight. One of them does dare break the ceasefire and I dump round after round onto his position.

	On to the next fight. The gunships swings around and we head to the next location. Koko sets the ship to autopilot and comes to join me as we slowly drift across the battlefield. Our tracers streak like comets across the void, reaching out to tear apart people that can't even see us, that can't even fight back. In the span of minutes we're killing dozens. But we've only been here for minutes. the crew that we killed had been doing this for hours. Think of all the soldiers that fight wars. All the bravery and acts of heroism. When they die it's not face to face with some enemy at some disputed barricade. It's in a state of confusion, killed by an enemy miles away. Since its invention, the majority of soldiers to die in combat have been killed in by artillery.

	But even then, in the end it is boot on the ground, not bombs that win the war. You can blast all the people to bits, but you need people of your own to hold the land you've laid to waste. I don't pretend to be better than those bombs – I see that even clearer now that I'm the one dropping them. I don't pretend to be better than the boots either. In spite of all our actions and antics tonight, I realize even more clearly that people like me do not win wars or battles, just try to tip them into someone's favor. If war's used to have 'Heroes,' I can tell you that they don't anymore and if they did I'm not one of them.
"I see tanks down there!" Koko says. "I'm switching to the big cannon. You know what to do."
I unstrapped myself ran down to the gun deck.

Thwump!

With every shot the 105mm gun kicks like an elephant-mule. With every shot I heft a thirty kilogram shell into the gun and slide it on in the breach, going elbow deep.

Thwump!

There's a rhythm to it that picks up the more you do it it

Thwump!

Heft, fist, step way back,

Thwump!

The pace of Koko and our grotesque love making picks up.

Thwump!

 I trust Koko enough to know that she's hitting whatever she's shooting at.

Thunk!

The jolt sent me stumbling over off balance. That wasn't a thwump that was –

The impact struck me so fast I didn't even know I had been hit. By the time I felt the pain of being struck by over five hundred kilos bucking backwards at ten meters a second, I was on the other side of the room.

"Koko! Were we jus – "

"Yes!" she shouted, "get up here on the guns, now!"

As I limped up off the ground I gasped for breath, and with each breath came a sharp, unstoppable pain. It doesn't Burn, nor does it sting or ache. The pain of broken bones is very unique sort of misery.

But I fought against the pain with every step. Every second counted. I collapsed into the chair next to Koko.

"Two fighters on us," Koko said as I switched to the anti-aircraft guns.

Tracers scratched their way into the night sky, arcing past the plane as it banked back around towards us. I missed. Koko waited patiently and then fired when she knew she would hit. A stream of red erupted from her turret, licking the fighter as it past us.

"Where's the other one? Where's the other one?"

"Lost track of it," I said.

And that's when the rockets hit us, and we loss half of our gas bladders.

For what it’s worth, I saw the streaks of lead belching from koko’s gun tear the wing of the responsible fighter clean off.
She ripped the goggles from both of our faces as she erupted from the chair.

"We're losing altitude. Suit up and get us some lift, now!"

Shrugging off the pain in my ribs I limped along the corridor the maintenance section of the airship. The radio cackled to life, "Hei Bai, it's Koko. We're coming down hard and need an extract. Stand by for coordinates…"

	I put the heat-proof suit on and strapped it tight. I looked like I was some sort of  deep sea diver wrapped in tinfoil. It kept all the heat out but it sure kept the heat in, too. I clumsily climbed the ladder in my suit to the airship's gas bladders. they had an airlock for maintenance. And I climbed inside. Breathing off of my regulator, every single raspy metallic breath I took was deafening. That's what I thought, until the airlock closed and hissed as it swapped out my air for the gas-bladder's mix of nitrogen and helium. I could feel the nose of the airship begin to tilt downward… could this airlock pressurize any slower?

"Hiro!" my headset radio screamed in my ear, "we're falling to fast and starting to lose buoyancy in the nose, you gotta get that gas bladder heated up in temperature. I think the arcing element is busted."

	With a heavy clunking sound the inner airlock door swung open and I stumbled into the gas bladder. Sure enough the oversized spark plug was out of alignment. These suits were also supposed to conduct electricity around your body to protect you from something like that, but I'm not sure I trusted getting too close to it. One option left, I guess, and it wasn't going to be fun. I took off my glove and arced lighting from my fingertips into the receiving end of the spark gaps.

"Whatever you're doing's working… hold on!"

My feet buckled as she steered the airship with a gust of wind.

"brace yourself!"

In her defense she tried her best. The huge blast of wind pushed off the ground to cushion us, but that didn't stop the blimp from slamming into the ground and sent me bouncing around the gas bladder. Any landing you can limp away from is a good one, I guess.

"Hiro!" Koko shouted, "Are you OK?"

	Couldn't talk with this respirator in my mouth. Had to get out fast… There was a rupture in the side of one of the bladders leading to the corridor. I squeezed and struggled through it only to get out just as the airlock door depressurized and opened. Figures.
As I stumble my way through the corridor and the gaping hole in the airship that leads outside, I pull my helmet off my face.

"Koko!" I shout.

"I'm right here!" I hear from a few meters away. I turn to look at her, and suddenly I'm blinded by a pair of hi-beams.

I Fall to the ground deaf and dumb and blind as the machinegun on top of the truck opens fire. The supersonic booms of the bullets going next to my face explode in my ears. As far as I know, I'm somehow not dead.

"Watch behind you, moron!"

A familiar voice… Peng?

I looked behind and saw the ventilated body of the Airbender that was about to shoot us.

"Give us a head up next time, for Yue's sake!" Koko said.

"You can complain about it later," Hei-Bai this time. "Just get in the car"

Hei Bai swung the armored car around next to use and the door popped open to Chang's friendly face with an outstretched arm. We climbed inside just as the bullets began to ping against our steel.

	I didn't think he'd do it. Koko definitely didn't think he'd do it. But here he was. Here we all were. In a tin can bouncing up and down over the countryside, over ten kilometers deep in enemy territory. And now racing back to the friendlies as fast as we could. Koko might not have trusted Hei Bai and to be fair I had some slight doubts too, but I hadn't trusted Peng. He could have shot me on 'accident' any time he wanted to and probably wouldn't have had to admit it was an 'accident.' Could have just as easily claimed it was the enemy. But he didn't shoot me. As a matter of fact he saved my life. I guess I owe him a favor right now.

	His heavy roof machinegun is still chugging along. The only thing that matches the sound of it firing is the sound of the incoming rounds striking our armor. It's rather deafening and violent, even when we're safe. If you want to get the idea of what it sounds like, take a tin and fill it with glass marbles of various size and weight. Now hold that tin can up over your head as high as you can, and slowly dump the contents into an empty ceramic toilet bowl. That should sound about right. On top of that sound was Hei Bai's driving, bouncing and swerving at full speed as we tried to escape. The most dangerous part of a mission is always extraction. As safe as we were from bullets, if a single rocket hit us we'd be vaporized in an instant. But that didn't concern me right now. That was out of my control. If it happens, it happens – maybe there was something to Buno's fatalistic hippy talk after all. So given the circumstances I did the only thing I could. The one thing that soldier's learn to do best. Not even the pain in my ribs could stop me. I fell into the deepest sleep of my life.


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INTERLUDE
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CABBAGE CORP

MEMO
To: President Mui
From: Vice President Xing
Carbon Copy: Offices of the War Department
Subject: huge profit from runoff problem

I'm sure it's come to every one's attention that there is a major ecological problem on our hand and something's needed to be done about it. The fertilizer CABBAGE FOOD ™ is responsible for a series of severe eutrophication and harmful algal blooms (HAB)s due to CABBAGE FOOD ™ runoff into local water suplies. These HABs, mostly from over-growth of the organism Cyanobacteria produce the chemical 3aS-(3a-α,4-α,10aR*))-2,6-diamino-4-(((amino-carbonyl)oxy)methyl)-3a,4,8,9-tetrahydro-1H,10H-pyrrolo(1,2-c)purine-10,10-diol, better known as [ REDACTED ], as a byproduct once they've have exhausted the majority of their natural resources. This chemical is highly [ REDACTED ], causing [ REDACTED ]. This has already resulted in several human deaths, dozens becoming sick, and complete devastation to local fish stocks, along with the death of any livestock that were drinking from contaminated water. Estimates are at 50 million yuans in damage.

This is certainly a crisis for our company. However, it is well known that the word for crisis is composed of the characters meaning both 'danger' and 'opportunity,' and this is most certainly an opportunity for our company. It has been discovered that the chemical [ REDACTED ] can be put to a number of profitable uses, most notably pesticides and military [ REDACTED ]. In the words our head scientist

	"while I am displeased morally with Cabbage Corps' ™ inability to own up to the suffering it is causing by not fixing the phosphorous runoff problem, I am still pleased to be attached to this project to develop this new line of insecticide; this could save millions of people from malaria, and help to feed them with fresh food untouched by blight or locusts. While I still wish Cabbage Corps ™ would do something about the current problem it created, I hope that this new development will outweigh that damage, and that something bad be turned into something good."

DR Huang is certainly right about this last statement. The whiz kids ran the numbers, and the potential profit is in the hundreds of millions. As a matter of fact, it is so profitable that we'd actually be making more money focusing R & D on the [ REDACTED ] and letting the runoff problem run its course and paying the fines that might be levied against us than we'd lose from pumping money into R & D to fix the runoff problem. Legal says it's unlikely that we'd be fined anyway. Can't blame a company because some farmers can't read instructions. That would be silly.

Edit: DR Huang has since been terminated for holding unpatriotic views contrary to the Harmonious Worker's Party of the Earth Kingdom